Monday, August 01, 2005

Teens and Technology

A new study from the Pew Internet and & American Life Project was released last week and although there were no big surprises revealed, a clear picture of the way that teens communicate and spend their leisure time emerged.
Here's are some findings I found significant:
87% of U.S. teens aged 12-17 use the internet, and 51% of teenage internet users say they go online on a daily basis. And for high school aged teens the percentages are even higher: in 7 th grade, it jumps to 82% who are online. From there, the
percent of users in the teen population for each grade climbs steadily before topping out at 94% for eleventh and twelfth graders.


One out of every two teens who use the internet lives in a home with a broadband connection. This statistic surprised me and lends more credence to the explosion of online content referred to in the Inquirer article I commented on in a previous post. This is an area that seems to hold a lot of promise for educational uses. By being able to share games, audio and video files and webcast, content and discussions can move out of the classroom. But more importantly we're now entering a time when many students have the skills and tools to produce these products as means to demonstrate their learning and teach others. In fact many are noticing and prediciting an explosion in amateur creativity (as described in this BBC article) that schools and students could, and should be a part of. Another by-product might be new meaningful interactive homework and enhancement activities. A frequent complaint I hear from students is the about the amount and ineffectiveness of homework. In fact, a study summarized here looked into this very matter. They used an interactive homework program to engage students and parents and found it a more effective learning tool and one that students would more readily complete. They also found that parents can play more of a role in high school students' schoolwork through programs like these. "High schools have the capacity to change the way that families support teens' school success. When high schools reach out to involve families, families are more likely to be involved in ways that support teens' success through the last year of high school."

"Instant messaging has become the digital communication backbone of teens' daily lives. About half of instant-messaging teens or roughly 32% of all teens use IM every single day."
"IM is a multi-channel space of personal expression for teens. They typically converse in text, but they also share links, photos, music, and video over IM."

IM is another overlooked technology that has educational uses. Teens are obviously very comfortable with it, and although you wouldn't want it to be used where more formal reflective writing is required, for quick informal discussion and interaction among teachers and classmates it is ideal.

When compared to adults, teens are more than twice as likely to play games online; 81% of online teens say they are gamers, compared to 32% of online adults.
This seems to be a growing area for educational software developers and something that was covered in my interview with Marc Prensky.

I believe that if we want to engage students in new ways we must utilize the formats of communication, entertainment, and information that they are familiar with. An earlier Pew study focused on what they termed the Digdisconnectonect: "Many schools and teachers have not yet recognized, much less responded to, the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet. Students report that there is a substantial disconnect between how they use the Internet for school and how they use the Internet during the school day and under teacher direction."

These studies taken together offer a portrait of our students and the means of content delivery and areas of interest that compete for their time. Students are regularly reporting that high school doesn't engage them. So rather than try to beat them; let's find ways to join them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your Blog! I'm with you! I'm a writer and a Literacy Specialist and into using multi-media in ways that I don't even understand yet.

IMing is a fascinating form of communication that is changing the very nature of literacy itself. The way my daughter uses it seems so amazing--she IMs several people at once. It's like a big party. I have never experienced this.

I've used IMing in a different way. I have one friend who I IM and we write poetry together this way. It is unbelieveably cool.

I will heart your site as a favorite and visit when I can.

I don't have time to read a lot right now, so you may have talked about this, but did you see the article in the Times Book Review section this week? A large portion of the article is about Blogs and the positive effect it is having on mainstream media.

--Monique

Tom McHale said...

Thanks Monique. I love the idea of collaborative writing through IM. I had a grad school course where we began each class with a poem in which a notepad was passed around and everyone wrote a line. There would sometimes be a suggestion or theme and sometimes the teacher would just start things off with a line. The problem was that it was passed around the room and you worked off the line that was left before you. If you had a group working on IM this process could be much more fluid. You would just need to ensure everyone participated and set up some ground rules and objectives. Now if schools would only embrace IM rather than block it, maybe more practices like this could be explored.
Thanks for the tip about the article about blogs. I hope you're able to stop back often and comment. I value your insights and suggestions. Tell me more about some of your experiences. By sharing our succeses and failures we can all benefit!