I found this fascinating quote today:

According to Nielsen Mobile, in the first quarter of 2009, the average U.S teenager made and received an average of 191 phone calls and sent and received 2,899 text messages every month. By the third quarter, the number of texts jumped to a whopping 3,146 messages per month. This is equivalent to more than 10 text messages per hour.omgzam.com, Online Media Gazette, Feb 2010

Actually, my 13-year-old daughter will usually get 10 text messages in a matter of minutes!

Why do we imagine that our students don’t write?  They do write, extensively, based on these data.  The real question? How do we harness all that interest in communication through writing (as Computer Mediated Communication) so that it serves education, too?

This same great blog talks about “four distinct generations: Baby Boomers (born 1946-64), Generation X (1965-79), Net Generation (1980-89) and the new iGeneration (born in the 1990s and beyond). The “i” designation represents the “individualized” nature of their media.”

We have to take this generational spread into consideration when we are planning instruction!  Over 45% of teachers today are in the Baby Boomer generation and need legitimate support in addressing the needs of a younger generation.  The two generations quite frankly confuse the heck out of each other.  Neither really “gets” the other and has a regrettable tendency to dismiss the other’s notions of what is necessary for a “good” education, right out of hand.

There are similar conflicts between each generational cohort.  The gap between the Net Generation and the iGeneration is just as confusing, in many ways.  Young teachers of the Net Generation and the iGeneration students often feel a nagging sense of rejection and confusion because they don’t understand each other any better than the older generations understand them.

The students that are in the PreK-12 years of education are truly like no other generation of student.  We must be more attuned to what their lives are like and use that to educate them.  We cannot expect them to live, or learn, in the past, just because we find it difficult to bring ourselves up to the speed of their lives.

Education can no longer be about memorizing facts.  Facts are at our literal fingertips! Education can no longer be about our version of history.  History is available globally for all to read and discover from original sources. Education can no longer be just about long division and showing your work.   The process now is simply to learn which buttons to push on the calculator or computer to get to the right answer.  We are, too often, teaching skills that no longer serve.

Education today must be about teaching these flying-fingered young people how to think critically and create and problem solve. They already know how to relate and communicate on many levels.  We need to help them learn to collaborate and discern excellence and insist on it from their leaders.  After all, it is our job to help shape the future that these iGeneration learners will inherit.

We don’t need to be asking them to leave their connections with each other outside the classroom.  We need to be asking how can we connect with them in the classroom!  And then, we need to do it.

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