The 'Google generation', the young people who have become so hooked on the web and computer games that they are unable to think, study and concentrate!

Thanks to Ian McCracken and Philip Graham from Govan High School for alerting me to a Radio 4 interview about the Internet, the Google generation and the rewiring of brains - available until Thurday 19th March 2008 via BBC iPlayer Transcript also available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/analysis/7935725.stm  

 The interview is described on the BBC iPlayer as follows:

"Kenan explores the reality behind the stereotype of the 'Google generation', the young people who have become so hooked on the web and computer games that they are unable to think, study and concentrate.

This characterisation is motivated by genuine concerns that heavy use of the internet and computer games are actually rewiring the brains of young people. They are learning and thinking differently to their forebears in a massive technological and social experiment. Kenan investigates these concerns and asks Stephen Fry, among others, whether the rise of the digital generation should be a cause for celebration or concern.

Broadcast on: BBC Radio 4, 8:30pm Thursday 12th March 2009

Duration: 28 minutes

Available until: 9:02pm Thursday 19th March 2009"

 

In addition to Stephen Fry, there are other familiar names like Tara Brazabon interviewed.  

As Philip Graham says:"This i-player programme is fascinating. I would recommend that you make some time to listen to it.  It poses a very serious questions about the internet and its resources creating either a very smart generation, a very dumb generation or a generation with a whole new way of using their brains to which we cannot relate.

For my part, I found it quite challenging as I found value in all the arguments. "

Visit to Robert Gordon University Business School

On Tuesday 17^th February Christine and I went to Aberdeen to visit David Gibbons - Wood, a senior lecturer in the Business School at Robert Gordon University who has obtained over £400,000 in European funding to run training programmes for SMEs in the Aberdeen area. So far he has enrolled 20 businesses that are providing 70 participants although he wants 175 people in total.  He is offering 12 courses in ‘bite sized chunks’. There will be an online forum to identify what learners want to do. However a blended learning approach will be used as wholly online delivery is unlikely to be successful. He is finding that individuals are more motivated than organisations which tend to focus on short term objectives.  He has been interviewing representatives of local SMEs. A lack of time available for training was the most cited problem in developing business skills in the organisation followed by a lack of money. From the list of subjects proposed the most popular was Marketing, followed by Finance, Enterprise Skills, leadership and E –Business.  This is interesting information for those interested in information usage in the workplace as marketing has fairly obvious possibilities. However there are clearly going to be problems of uptake with any form of training.

David had not previously given much thought to a role for information literacy in workplace training but he is interested now. There will be more feedback from his work in due course which should be very useful and we will continue to collaborate.

For more information about the project see the Business Skills for Growth website 

Web 2.0 Tools

At the end of November John and I attended the SLIC FE Conference ( see John's post) and one of the speakers was Phil Bradley described in the programme as the "Well known Internet consultant, librarian and popular CILIP 'Update' columnist".

During his presentation he talked about practical uses for Web 2.0 which he described as a load of stuff, state of mind, which requires us to think differently now and in the future and that websites were traditional, non interactive, dull and boring and that Web 2.0 allowed us to take back control.

Questions that we need to ask include: What do you want to do? What can you do better? What would you like to do?

Some of the things he covered included:

Wiki's and their advantages - flexibility, easy and quick to update

Bookmarks - share with others, can access wherever we are e.g. delicious

Weblogs - quick, easy, non technical, current, interactive, a site in it's own right

RSS - bringing information to you, filtering in different ways

Provide data in different ways:

Podcasts - for example audio tours of the library

YouTube - can be used as a good information tool

Flickr

Slideshare - useful to find experts, introduction to subject/s. See his presentation from this event on Slideshare Web 2.0 in the library.

Communication - we need to go where the conversations are taking place, space is becoming an information resource, don't just look at email (email is for old people) look at other forms - weblogs, twitter. Social networks - utilise them.

Expect obstacles that can be put in the way of librarians who want to engage in Web 2.00 tools: it can't be done, we don't have the resources, bandwidth problems, security issues, not enough time, not your job. His answer to that was ignore it because Web 2 is changing the way we use information, find information, do our jobs, interact with people, look at everything.

I found his presentation informative and inspiring, giving me ideas on how to take the National Information Literacy Framework (Scotland) from a large pdf to a tabbed interactive website. I've spent some time playing around with creating a website with tabs in Netvibes (one of the a tools suggested by Phil in his presentation) but felt it still didn't give me the interactivity so have decided to use a weblog. Our project blog has been working well and a blog would give me tabbed pages for the framework, posts for: comments on the framework; relevant exemplars that could be linked to the framework levels; information literacy policies or strategies; any other items of interest or relevance. Will keep you posted on progress.

His webisite www.philb.com is a mine of information and worth having a look at.

Using gaming to incorporate Information Literacy with Maths

Article on integrating games and Web 2.0 tools into IL instruction

"Gaming and learning: Winning information literacy" by Marsha Spiegelman and Richard Glass in C&RL News, October 2008 Vol. 69, No. 9

This ties in with my last post on using gaming and learning. This time it is with HE students in the US and of particular interest is the integration of IL within Maths and students enjoying using Maths logic to search databases. Examples of IL and Maths are thin on the ground.

Agan it is a collaborative piece of work which I think is important linking people / professions and IL / academic subjects to produce inovative learning. This is reiterated by the writers in the last sentence of the article
"Successful projects like ours require that you leave the confines of your library walls. Approach like-minded colleagues, attend cross-disciplinary conferences, and turn on your inner gamer to make productive collaboration happen."

This is something we try to do within the Scottish Information Literacy Project.

Although this is set within HE, the thrust of the concept could be equally applied within other sectors.

Scottish Learning Festival

Attended the Scottish Learning Festival at the SECC in Glasgow. The event is about learning and teaching and gives me the opportunity to meet up with contacts within Scottish education and make new ones. Also see the latest developments in education, to swap and discuss ideas. The Curriculum for Excellence and GLOW were the main focus with practical advice and ideas about effective use of ICT in classrooms to improve the quality of learning and teaching along with discussions and presentations about the draft learning experinces and outcomes.

There were some really innovative ideas like the transition project at Mussleburgh Grammar School (Ollie Bray) and Stoneyhill Primary School (Seonaid McGillvray) which used the computer game 'Guitar Hero' as a basis for enriched assessment for enriched enquiry learning. The pupils start on the project in P7 and form a Rock Band which they take on the road. They have to plan their road trip, find out information on the country they are going to, look at timetables to work out how to get there. The pupils work is assessed by the teacher and by pupil peer assessment. Transition documents accompany the pupils who take their work with them to continue working on it in S1 at secondary school. Amongst other things they create a card to promote their Rock Band. Once the project is finished a copy is sent back to the pupils primary school teacher.

During the presentation I couldn't help thinking that the skills they were talking about are information literacy skills but there was no mention of information literacy and no mention of the school librarian / learning resource co-ordinator contributing to this project. Missed opportunity.

The project was part of the presentation about Enriched assessment for enriched enquiry: inter/cross-disciplinary studies to develop skills and attributes for learning, life and work in the UK, Queensland and New Zealand.

Will do another post when I have time about the other presentations / discussions I attended.