It Has Been a While…
I’ve spent a good part of the summer making the Grand Tour visiting our children and their families. While away, family was the focus of my days. I dabbled occasionally with research on the Web and planning for the upcoming year. “School” pretty much was on the back burner. Who wants to work when you have delightful grandchildren who giggle with when you’re being silly?
We’ve been back a couple of weeks. Despite the summer coming to an end, I’ve been lazy, as if there would be no end to this season of low stress and no deadlines. You could say I’ve been like the lotus eater. I didn’t work on all those things I’d promised myself I’d do when I had the time. Lessons weren’t created. Information and resources weren’t researched. Staff development plans never got past the initial dream stage.
Like Odysseus, I now must gather my focus and lash my attention to the spar lest I conspire to remain in the land of the lotus eaters.
The farther I distance myself from the joys of the summer, and the nearer I get to the shoreline of the new school year, the more I feel the pull of excitement of discovering new things and rethinking what I want to do over the next year. I’m clear that I don’t want to continue with the same lessons that I can practically do in my sleep. I want to challenge my thinking and explore new directions with my students. I want my students to find the same joy and excitement in learning that I do.
I’ve been exposed to a number of new concepts in the last couple of days that have challenged my thinking. I’m still trying to fit them into some kind of framework that affect my teaching.
First, my 32-year old son criticized my e-mail. We’ll he didn’t exactly criticize. It was more of a casual statement that I’d stayed in my comfort zone and hadn’t moved ahead with technology. To understand his comment, you need the background on his statement. I tend to send long e-mails. Not just long, lengthy. More like tomes, except sometimes I really can’t claim the “learned” part of the definition. My youngest son calls my e-mails “SPAM” and has threatened to list me as a spammer in his e-mail software. My middle child sometimes responds with the comment that I should “get a life”.
My e-mails are carefully constructed, being read, reread and revised until I’m positive that I’m communicating my ideas. I spend a lot of time crafting my message.
According to my kids, that is so last century. Their e-mails are so brief that sometimes I’m not sure that they understood what I sent. They are into text messaging. If I want to communicate quickly, I have to text them. Days might go by before e-mail is checked. Yet texting continues as part of the fabric of their daily life. Without skipping a beat or missing a syllable of anything while I’m talking with them, a quick glance at their phone tells them who just communicated with them through texting and what that person wanted. A deft flick of the wrist, casting eyes downward, and the message is received. A few swift pecks on a keyboard not much bigger than my index finger, and the response has been sent without missing a beat of our conversation.
I have to admit being a bit defensive when son #1 told me people don’t want to use e-mail as much anymore. Quick queries and immediate responses is what today’s generation wants. It also explains why days may go by before I hear back from my 16-year old grandson. Text messaging is beginning to replace e-mail, just as e-mail began to take over snail mail.
A week after our conversation about my e-mails, AKA SPAM, I happened to find an article on an educational blog discussing this same growing dichotomy in communication strategies. Interesting enough, age appears to be the predominate determining factor for preferences in communication medium.
So what does this have to do with education? I’m not exactly sure. My best guess hypothesis is that younger brains than mine hunger for information in faster, shorter morsels. While I love to lavish time upon each piece of information, savoring the meaning and connections, today’s learner wants to acquire and utilize information in a shorter time frame.
Discovery Education videos have already anticipated that change in paradigm. Many of the full-length videos have been divided into video segments or clips, creating a “video byte” around a specific concept. I have to admit I tend to think in terms of complete movies rather than “clips”. This year, in light of my rethinking how younger people communicate, I want to do more with the video clips in instruction. I want to see if it really makes a significant difference in my students acquiring concepts. I think it may.
