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big mistake in planning for the school of the future is starting
where we are today and imagining how to move forward. With that
approach, we necessarily drag along a great deal of excess baggage.
Instead, we should begin with where we want to be, where we think
we will be, and work back through all the steps necessary to get
to that point.
Let us begin, then, with a description of the "digital child,"
the boy or girl who came into existence and lived his or her whole
life in a digital world. This child has never known a time when
computers were not an ordinary part of day-to-day life, or a time
when constant change in the world was not the norm, or a time
when it was difficult to access information or to communicate
with other human beings with little regard to their actual geographical
location. The digital child is the offspring of parents who were
not born in a digital world but grew up during the transformation
from an analog world to the digital one. Even so, they share with
the digital child a number of common characteristics that make
them different from the analog parents and analog children from
the latter half of the 20th century.
Time
For the digital child, life is a balance between working, learning,
playing, and tending to physical and spiritual needs. These aspects
of life are not broken up into concrete and nearly immobile blocks
of time, however, as they traditionally have been for most 20th-century
children. Instead, working, learning, and playing are interspersed
throughout the day and throughout the year. It's not that routine
is unimportant for the growing digital child. It's that the timing
of these various activities is tailored to the child's individual
needs and desires, as well as to the schedules of the child's
parents. After all, working and playing are not necessarily best
done at the same moment for all children, and digital parents
do not necessarily follow the 8:00 to 5:00 work regimen of their
forebears.
Location
Just as time is fitted to the child, so is the location of life's
activities. Learning does not always take place in the same building
or even at the same longitude and latitude. Learning is something
that is a constant throughout the day, as are work and play. All
these activities are done at home, at "school," and in the community,
both physical and digital. (Of course, safety in both of these
worlds is of primary importance for digital children.)
Activities
In fact, the lines between what is learning, what is work, and
what is play are difficult to distinguish. Activities are no longer
compartmentalized according to time and place -- the time for
recess, the place at school where the computers are housed --
and that has tended to blur the lines. Of course, there are times
when the digital child is clearly at play or clearly at work,
but there are also many times when these activities are inseparable.
Just as 20th-century schooling mirrored 20th-century adult work,
with its competition and cubicles and hierarchies, so too does
21st-century schooling resemble 21st-century adult work. The digital
parents work at home as independent contractors, or telecommute,
or move easily from job to job and career to career, learning
as they go and remaining productive as they adjust their hours
to their needs or whims. Their work time and play time are often
indistinguishable.
Relationships
For the digital child, relationships with other human beings
are the most important aspect of life. Together, family relationships,
personal relationships, community relationships, working relationships,
and learning relationships form the fabric of the child's existence.
These relationships are much less subject to time and place than
were the relationships forged by the 20th-century child, however.
Digital children learn with and play with people whose age, religion,
culture, economic status, and first language are quite different
from their own or those of their parents. And, most likely, a
significant number of these relationships are with people who
live thousands of miles away. This is important because, when
they grow up, digital children will be expected to work with people
of any age, religion, culture, economic status, and first language
-- not just at a local workplace, but anywhere.
Technology
An old proverb says, "Fish can't see the water." Likewise, our
digital child swims in an ocean of changing technologies. The
ebb and flow of new gizmos and scientific discoveries are merely
punctuated by occasional technological typhoons reminiscent of
the Y2K storm. Quite at home in this swirling sea, the digital
student learns to take advantage of each new technological advancement,
making the most of its contributions to his or her professional
and personal life and confidently awaiting the next new breakthrough.
Temperament
Digital children react to the world rather differently than
their 20th-century counterparts did. For example, they are patient
with the deficiencies of adults, who often seem hopeless and helpless
in the face of emerging technologies. These children have had
lots of practice. After all, they are the first generation in
history that is, as Don Tapscott has put it, "more comfortable,
knowledgeable, and literate than their parents about an innovation
central to society." Digital children are more independent, more
intellectually open, more tolerant, and more adventurous than
most 20th-century children. They hold strong views and expect
instant gratification. At the same time, they are at greater risk
from AIDS, school shootings, terrorism, depression, and suicide
than their 20th-century predecessors. And they represent a larger
population segment than those analog "baby boomers" who dominated
the 20th century. Their collective voices are heard above all
others.
Learning style
Digital children do not learn in isolation. They might work
alone, but they learn in groups (even if some of the group members
live in other countries). For them, knowledge is like dropping
a pebble in a pond. Waves of understanding wash over the digital
classroom. Working out an answer and sharing it with your digital
classmate is no longer considered cheating. Cheating is keeping
the answer to yourself. Cheating is copying someone else's expression
of ideas and knowledge -- not sharing those ideas and that knowledge
with others. Learning is collaborative and social, not solitary
and competitive.
These children abhor being made to jump through arbitrary hoops.
Thankfully, 20th-century work sheets and busywork are a thing
of the past. Digital children seek relevance. They want to solve
real problems. They want what they do to make a genuine contribution
to the world. (Yes, even if they are only in digital kindergarten.)
And they want recognition for real accomplishments. They are guerrilla
learners, learning only what they need at the moment to solve
the problem, to complete the project. Although they recognize
that some knowledge, some insights, some creative works are timeless,
they instinctively understand that today's knowledge might turn
out to be useless tomorrow. They do not accept the proposition
that they must learn something now because it will be useful 10
years from now. They know better.
So what do these digital people want from their school system
anyway? They want pretty much what children and parents want today
-- only they want the digital version, not the 20th-century analog
edition.
Curriculum
Like all schools throughout history, the digital school must
prepare students for life in their own time. Because the 21st
century is one of explosive social change driven by explosive
advances in technology, this will be a real challenge for teachers,
administrators, board members, and parents. There are, nonetheless,
some constants.
One skill we must help children master is the ability to learn
-- to gather knowledge, make use of it, let go of knowledge that
is of little use, and then learn new and relevant things. The
estimate of the number of totally different careers digital children
will have in their lifetime continues to climb. These students
must be prepared to perform the tasks of jobs that do not even
exist while they're in school. People in the 20th century often
had trouble unlearning what they had learned as children, but
that process was necessary in order to move forward. Digital children
must retain that skill as they grow up -- they'll be called on
to use it over and over.
Digital children must learn to read critically, write effectively,
listen intently, and speak fluently. They must be able to find
information, understand the information they locate, evaluate
the reliability of that information, and see how to apply it to
answer a pressing question or to take advantage of a new opportunity.
They must be able to communicate their ideas to diverse groups
using a variety of media. They must also be able to understand
the ideas of others and see how their own concepts might blend
with those of their work-mates to solve problems and create new
things.
Finally, the digital curriculum must produce citizens who are
extremely discerning. With access to an avalanche of information
and countless numbers of human beings, the digital child must
learn to distinguish the useful from the hype, the genuine from
the imitation, the sincere from the con, the quality from the
flash, the truth from the propaganda. And to do so quickly and
repeatedly.
Flexibility
What the digital family requires of its school system is flexibility,
especially the opportunity to chose from a wide range of educational
choices. Digital parents expect to custom-design their children's
education. The old "my way or the highway" attitude of 20th-century
schools is, thankfully, a thing of the past in the digital world.
Parents blend and mix educational opportunities afforded by face-to-face
classrooms, home schooling, distance learning, private lessons,
travel, and other profit and nonprofit educational institutions
in the local community or the Internet community.
Choice has been tremendously expanded. The time, place, frequency,
and content of instruction is individualized but not isolated.
Digital children, as a result, are much more likely than their
20th-century analog counterparts to get what they need or want
whenever and wherever they need or want it.
Digital parents react strongly if they perceive that schools
are getting in the way of their children's education. As a result,
schools no longer set policies that put the benefit of their employees
above the benefit of their students.
Quality
The digital community demands quality in education above everything
else. Its members know that an excellent education is the key
to thriving in the digital world. They are not misled by the educational/political
trends of the analog 20th century: "Standards" have been replaced
by choice; test scores have been replaced by products and solutions;
and diplomas have long since been replaced by the flow from data
to information to insight to wisdom.
Thomas
G. Layton, a self-professed online
learning evangelist, is the originator of CyberSchool, the first
Internet-based public high school distance learning program. He
is a consultant with Clarity Innovations, Inc., in Portland, Ore.
Illustration by Robert Liberace.
Go to Analog Lessons by
Kevin Bushweller.
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