Is the “online generation” as tech savvy as we think?

Technology is deeply embedded in a student’s personal and academic life. For most students in middle school through graduate school, it’s not a question of whether or not technology will be used but rather what kind and how much. You would be hard pressed to find yourself in a college course that didn’t require your assignment be typed before handing it in for a grade. Or one that didn’t require all cell phones be silenced and threaten a grade deduction for texting, Googling, or gaming under the desk. A recent study performed at Ball State University found 99.8% of their student population owned a cell phone, of which the majority were smartphones.

Some make the assumption that because this “online generation” is comfortable with technology that they are also technologically savvy. A study by the Nielson Norman Group found college-aged students spend as little time as possible on a site and leave quickly when they are confronted with a new interface style. They also found teenagers and college-aged students preferred sites that were image heavy over text heavy. Students resorted to the search engine as a tool to get them out of a foreign design, but if one wasn’t available on the site they weren’t willing to sacrifice their time by learning how to navigate or read through the content to find their way. The older generations are correct in believing the “online generation” is comfortable with technology. But they are comfortable creatures of habit who prefer to keep their navigation to clean and familiar sites and are not to be confused with computer engineers.

Just because this generation has spent more time with their fingertips against a keyboard doesn’t mean they have learned the skills to navigate efficiently, understand how their chosen search engine uses search engine optimization (SEO), or how to decipher who is a credible and reliable source and what is an advertisement, scam or opinion. Even more, in the 18-24 age range that was used for this study, 40% will have literacy skills too low to read a website that uses anything more than basic sentence structure. Maybe we should support this generation to become the technology gurus we believe them to be and provide them with the skills to use the internet as a resource as well as an entertainment machine. How are some ways classes can use technology besides typing a paper or using a PowerPoint?  Teaching students to navigate in unfamiliar territory will promote their critical thinking skills to find credible sources, and to turn on their brains and turn off auto-correct and predictive technology.   It will also help them to understand when it is best to tune out the technology and connect interpersonally.

Read the study “College Students on the Web” at useit.com

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Blending Computers in the Classroom

Carol’s Summary:

New York City and several other school districts around the country are analyzing how to integrate technology to serve a variety of students in K-12.   They are also looking at the ways in which teachers roles will change as technology becomes a bigger part of the teacher and learning mix.

The key to technology in the future is flexibility. Glencoe is launching a Get Ready for College program this spring which can be used independently by students or in conjunction with a counselor or a teacher.   Many of the nations home-schooled students will have a chance to be exposed to the same concepts they might encounter in a typical high school.  Others who might have learning issues, can go at a slower pace while those who need to be more challenged can have a more rigorous experience.   Technology and teaching cooperatively will be the key to each child’s success in the future.  The flexibility of content providers and the teachers themselves will be the determining factors in the educational, career and life success of the next wave of students.

Article: Blending Computers Into Classrooms

At P.S. 100 in the Bronx, fourth-graders look intently at their laptop computers, watching a cartoon character wearing big sneakers explain prime factors. Wearing headphones, the students listen to and see the multiple-choice questions on their screens and tap in their answers.

Suddenly, an instant message from their teacher pops up: “5 more minutes and then we’ll review.”

Read the full article at: wsj.com

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New Technology Can Get You Fired Before You’re Hired

Carol’s Summary:

A startup called Social Intelligence and its companion Social Intelligence Monitoring are the newest concepts influencing the hiring process and job security in the world of work. Social Intelligence scans through social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn and thousands of other sources, to find any hint of bad character in future and current employees.

The software can only use publicly shared information, however, if an employee gets tagged by their friend in a not-so-flattering picture from college, the boss who has Social Intelligence Monitoring will be notified by a text message containing a direct link. The employee’s social networking information will be evaluated using categories like “Poor Judgment,” “Gangs,” “Drugs and Drug Lingo,” and “Demonstrating Potentially Violent Behavior.”

If a company decides to use Social Intelligence they become liable if an employee comes to work displaying violent or threatening behavior because these character traits should have been caught in the scan. The company also cannot punish an employee for past behavior. The concept of the software is to get an idea of who the employee is, rather than punish them for what they have done.

Social Intelligence is only a piece of the predictive industry. Among the growing industry is a company called Recorded Future that uses software to predict traffic jams, public unrest, and stock performance and Google which is developing a search that can predict the probability of employee resignation.

In the future, employees can expect employers to use a combination of data taken from resumes, interviews, work history, etc. as well as from social networking scanners. With this combined data, the company will be able to predict if their employee is going to steal, quit, lie, among many other things, and will stop them before they have the chance to follow through.

Use your best judgment when creating social networking profiles and other online materials. Even though updating your friends on your social networking sites might be one of your favorite pastimes, your audience is the entire Web. Stay safe and don’t let your online personality become a roadblock in your career.

Article: ‘Pre-crime’ Comes to the HR Dept.

In the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, police belonging to a special Pre-crime unit arrest people for crimes they would do in the future. It’s science fiction, and it will probably never happen in our lifetimes.

Read the full article at: itmanagement.earthweb.com

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Online learning environments are not for every student

Research (NBER) shows the positive findings of a 2009 study might have been premature in supporting online learning as an alternative to face-to-face classes. The recent study found males, Hispanics, and low-performing students tend to struggle the most in online learning environments. The results cause concern since more and more community colleges are adopting online courses as a cheaper alternative to face-to-face learning — and these three groups are most likely to attend those community colleges.

The most recent study used a pool of 312 undergraduates enrolled in an microeconomics class. The results showed: “Hispanic students who took the microeconomics class online finished the semester a full grade lower than Hispanic students who learned in a face-to-face environment. Males who watched lectures and studied online were half a letter grade behind males who learned in the classroom, as were low-performing students—those who had a grade point average below the university’s mean GPA.”

Watch for “Keys to Online Learning” by the Keys author team and co-authored by Kateri Drexler, due out this December.

Article: Study: Online learning less effective for some

Higher education’s embrace of online courses could hurt the performance of some groups of students, according to a study that contradicts the findings of a 2009 report from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) showing that online students perform as well, or better, than their peers in face-to-face settings on average.

Read the full article at: ecampusnews.com

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GPS technology used to track students

Carol’s Summary

The southwest suburban district of Chicago is the second school district in the state to use new tracking technology to locate students boarding and exiting their school bus. The technology serves to ease the parent’s mind and increase safety for the child. The tracking system is used in 5% of the 490,000 buses nationwide and tracks K-12 students.

The system works by using GPS to track the whereabouts of the bus and radio frequency to locate the student. The student has a card that gets scanned when they board the bus and when they exit, so parents can call the transportation director or school secretaries to find the location of their child’s bus and know whether or not they safely arrived at school or if they got off at the right bus stop. Psychologists say a relaxed parent can result in a happier child. Because this is geared to ease the parent’s mind, it’s believed that the next step in this tracking technology will be to allow the parent to track their child themselves without having to contact the school.

Article: A beep, a flash and one less worry for parents

Josh Case climbed aboard the yellow school bus Tuesday, lifting his backpack to scan an ID card that had been assigned to him on his first day of kindergarten.

Read the full article at: www.chicagotribune.com


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Filling Micro-moments Fatigues the Brain

 

Carol’s Summary:

 

The scene opens with a San Francisco woman listening to her iPod, sending an email on her iPhone, and watching television while pedaling on an elliptical. Reporter Matt Richtel uses this subject and other familiar characters, like the guy talking on his phone while pushing his child in the grocery cart, to show people’s need to fill their days “micro-moments” with something entertaining or seemingly productive.

 

The problem? Scientists have found that constantly pumping your brain with digital input is taking away necessary downtime that our brains require to learn, remember information and come up with new ideas. Instead of being entertaining or relaxing, technology is actually fatiguing the brain by not giving it time to rest and process. However, there are some researchers who believe the benefits of technology out-weigh the side effects because people are more motivated to workout when they have their ear buds, their iPhone and their favorite t.v. show.  

Article: Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.

To read the full article: www.nytimes.com

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