the new student: be funny or I zap

(illustration-replacing link) The Dutch educational world has to cope with “a new type of student” entering the gates of knowledge-acquisition. This was the theme of a one-day conference organised for the educational staff by their school CHN. The conference morning was very un-orthodox, the afternoon very orthodox (workshops plus general conclusions). We entered the conference room, which was the auditorium, offering place to 280 people, it was fully occupied, but fortunately outside in the hall people could also follow the proceedings on big TV screens. As I said, we entered the room and were immediately surprised. At two screens we could follow how two students (hidden behind a curtain) played a computer-game called “the Call of Duty”, a horrible game with soldiers killing each other in an almost destroyed French city. A presenter of the type “funny talk show” was supposed to exhort the audience to be enthusiastic and motivated to think and discuss. But we hardly got the opportunity, because the morning was an experiment in “multi-tasking”.

Multi-tasking, so the presenter brought forward while the war-game continued on two giant screens on the floor, is doing a number of tasks simultaneously. E.g. watching TV, doing a computer-game and reading a study book. And, when you are baby-sitting, also feeding a baby in a baby-chair. It is said that the “new student” is very competent in multi-tasking while we, old-fashioned schoolmasters, only could spend our attention to one task at a time. Furthermore, continued the speaker, the new student was accustomed to master all kinds of ICT tools such as ipods, computer-games, mobilephones, Internet, chatting, etc. and the question was how could we as teachers use these abilities in an attractive curriculum. Because, the new student-slogan was: “be entertaining or I zap”.

Well, to test our multi-tasking abilities during the morning hours we had to do the following tasks, which were also a demonstration of the possibilities and opportunities of modern ICT communication and application:

- (very old-fashioned): listen attentively to three guest lecturers (because we are only beginning multi-taskers, we weren’t demanded to listen to all three simultaneously);
- Sending SMS messages about the discussed topic immediately displayed on a big screen at the left side of the floor;
- Reading messages and opinions about the topic sent to us live from our sites in South Africa and Bangkok, Thailand, on a screen of the same size at the right side of the floor;
- Doing a knowledge-test at primary school level (spelling, calculation, and stuff) because in the newspapers it was said that students lacked too much that kind of knowledge, and now they would see how teachers would achieve on this point;

We as a school feel that students (and their future employers) would be more attracted by learning methods that use teamwork and personality growth more than individually studying textbooks and writing assignments, we embrace a so-called “constructivist” approach to learning. So this could be a fifth feature of the “new student”, it wasn’t brought forward as conference issue, but one of the guest lecturers discussed it.

Anyway, despite the chaotic, but well-directed morning session we simply ignored the screens for a great deal and focused our attention to the guest speakers. The most challenging of the three I found Dr. Paul Kirschner who rejected the notion of multi-tasking except for “tasks” such as “chewing gum during biking”, and who also disagreed with translating the theoretical vision of “constructivism” into a concrete learning curriculum. Especially this second statement did boil the adrenaline of some of my colleagues who spent years to this work. But a long discussion would be boring too much (think of the zapping student!), so there was no time to discuss.
The morning was closed by a free lunch, offered by the school, and the afternoon was spent in the usual workshops (one could choose one at a maximum). The outcome was a bit disappointing, namely that we would do our best even more than we already did, to integrate modern e-methods and visions in our learning curriculum, but that was not the main point. The main point was that we had an unforgettable day with many experiences and, as Dr. Paul Kirschner stated, the real learning only takes place by doing (experiencing) something with what you have heard or read. All participants whom I spoke about the conference, agreed that they learned something and that they were more focused on differences of the student of today and the student of fifteen years ago (we had to explain to them what a computer was, now it’s often the reverse).