I am getting the vibe that we're beyond iGeneration, as it seems they are a bit younger, but I found this section pertaining to learning that seemed relevant.
Because these kids are more immersed and at younger ages, Rosen says, the educational system has to change significantly.
"The growth curve on the use of technology with children is exponential, and we run the risk of being out of step with this generation as far as how they learn and how they think," Rosen says. "We have to give them options because they want their world individualized."
Verhaagen agrees.
"They know almost every piece of information they want is at their disposal whenever they need it," Verhaagen says. "They're less interested in learning facts and learning data than in knowing how to gain access to it and synthesize it and integrate it into their life. We're talking about kids in elementary school and up and talking about much younger children who know how to get ahold of information. Their brains are developing in ways where they're taking in astronomical amounts of information, screening out unimportant details and focusing on the parts they need."
“as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”
what we are witnessing is not just an educational breakdown but a deformation of the very idea of intelligence.
Even those who have come to the Web late in life are not so very different, then, from the fifth-graders who, as an elementary school principal told Bauerlein, proceed as follows when they are assigned a research project: “go to Google, type keywords, download three relevant sites, cut and paste passages into a new document, add transitions of their own, print it up, and turn it in.”
even those who are most gung-ho about new ways of learning probably tend to cling to a belief that education has, or ought to have, at least something to do with making things lodge in the minds of students—this even though the disparagement of the role of memory in education by professional educators now goes back at least three generations, long before computers were ever thought of as educational tools.
adapting its understanding of what education is to the new realities of how the new generation of “netizens” actually learn (and don’t learn) rather than trying to adapt the kids to unchanging standards of scholarship and learning.
“lower-order skills” in comparison with the spatial, information-gathering, and pattern-recognition skills fostered by hours at the computer screen
can’t imagine a mathematician saying the same thing about math, or a biologist about biology, yet, sad to say, scholars, journalists, and other guardians of culture accept the deterioration of their province without much regret.
humanities stopped being, or even wanting to be, “guardians of culture” a long time ago.
In other words, the “mentors” have not only betrayed their pupils, they have denounced the very idea of mentorship in anything but the tools of deconstruction which allow them to set themselves up as superior to—rather than the humble acolytes of—the culture they study.
redefining education as the acquisition of information-retrieval skills
No one has ever taught them that books can be read for pleasure or enlightenment—or for any other purpose than to be exposed as the coded rationalization for the illegitimate powers of the ruling classes that they really are
But while Bauerlein takes Johnson to task on several points, he seems to suggest that all our educators have to do is expose their charges to some superior alternative to “the ordinary stuff of youth culture”
“Young people,” he rightly notes, “need mentors not to go with the youth flow, but to stand staunchly against it, to represent something smarter and finer than the cacophony of social life.” He’s also right that they need more time away from the computer in order to acquire the skills of “deep reading” recommended by Nicholas Carr.
But they are not likely to get either one so long as so many educators cling as they do now to the axiomatic belief not just that “learning can be fun” but that it must be fun, and the equally axiomatic rejection of that which may cause pain and humiliation, even if these are productive of real learning
Well, learning certainly is fun! The process of learning can often times be difficult, terrifying, exciting, depressing, saddening etc. What's interesting is that there is no mention of relevance here. Learning is not always fun, but I think it is always fun when it is relevant. It also seems that the subjective experience of learning only occurs when it is fun. It doesn't feel like learning to me unless it is relevant to me; if it is relevant to me, it is fun!
By extension, perhaps we benefit from thinking about learning from both subjective and objective perspectives, including both singular and collective objects (learning of an individual subjectively and objectively + learning of a group subjectively and objectively).
Great education opportunities available to the wealthy and elite of Britain. An 11-year old English boy named "Harry" tells us about all the really fancy, expensive computer equipment used at his school. It even ties in with their class trip to Madrid!