Procrastadabbler

I’ve been working for a very long time on an article about what I’m calling the deletion of participation. One of the major assumptions that I’m challenging is the idea that all youth are automatically facile with digital technology. The idea was bounced around quite a bit at several of the sessions I was at (not mine ironically), and there are a significant number of people who are really holding on to the idea that kids are innately or inherently tech savvy. Brigid Barron made the all important point that we really need to find out what kids are doing rather than just conjecturing. Well, I’ve been trying to do so (and not particularly successfully), but I am finding that there is a small but significant population that doesn’t have regular access, and the access they do have is limited. So despite some people’s claims that kids from less affluent areas are finding access and doing cool things, there are still kids who aren’t.

Then today (when I should be writing but am finding everything but), I wandered over to Dan Perkel’s blog. As I mentioned, I met him at a session and was able to chat briefly. His blog however has a great post about Jenkin’s discussion of how problematic the “digital native” “digital immigrant” dichotomy.  One of the points made is that the youth aren’t necessarily all power users, and that the older folk are catching up. Now, by definition I am a digital immigrant or newcomer to use Lankshear & Knobel’s term. However, I actually know more about many digital modes than do my students. Naturally there is lots that I don’t know, but that’s true of anything. The key is that I’m willing to explore and try things out. It’s what Michele Knobel called being willing to give it a go and to get in there and muck around.

That’s the type of learning I’m trying to engender in my undergrads, but they’ve been so socialized to education being about performing to the test and to the grade that they often have a hard time when they’re not given hard and fast rules and rubrics and instructions. They almost seem afraid to give it a go and muck around because there is risk of “not doing it right” and “not getting the grade.”

So, what we have is really two epistemologies and ontologies battling one another but it’s not a battle being carried out between generations as Prensky set it up. Instead the battle is being waged within our youth. The survivors, as my work with “Lisa” indicates, is that the successful youth are those who can “code switch.”