Digital Technology Children and Young People - Edinburgh University [presentation]

I recently spoke at Edinburgh University on the subject of Digital Technology Children and Young People.I promiced I would post the slides and notes - sorry its taken a bit longer than I expected!

The slides that I used during the presentation can be found here:

Digital Technology Children and Young People

View more presentations from Ollie Bray.

Some of the points that I covered were:

1. The world is constantly evolving

The world is changing. We still do the same things but technology allows us to do thing in different ways. This is true in work play and education.

The two examples I used to illustrate this were:

i) Alice in Wonderland the book, Alice in wonderland available on the Nintendo DS and Alice in Wonderland for the Apple iPad.

The text is the same in all three versions so it still promotes literacy and reading but the delivery mechanism is different. Some will say the ‘text’ is more engaging on the iPad, some will say there is nothing like flicking through the pages of a paper novel and I would say it doesn’t make any difference at all it’s the same thing and we should allow choose how they want to engage with the ‘text’ if they want to engage with it at all.

ii) Scrabble the board game, scrabble for the Nintendo DS and Seek and Spell for the iPhone.

In all three versions of the above word game the principles are the same. Collect or be given letter to spell words to score points. The task is the same but technology may (or may not add value).

This led into the main theme of the presentation which was change.


2. Changing Young People

  We looked at the Platform 4 Research from Chanel 4 which suggested that in the group of 12 – 24 year olds surveyed:

• They personally own 8 devices (including MP3 player, PC, TV, DVD player, mobile phone, stereo, games console, and digital camera)
• They frequently conduct over 5 activities whilst watching TV
• 25% of them agree that “I’d rather stay at home than go on a holiday with no internet or phone access”
• A quarter of young people interviewed text or IM (instant message) friends they are physically with at the time
• They have on average 123 friends on their social network spaces
• And the first thing the majority of them do when they get home is turn on their PC

We also looked at some Ofcom research which suggests that:

•  84% of children ages between 5 – 15 live in a household with intent access.
• 35% of 11 – 16 year olds have internet access in their bedroom (75% have a games console in their bedroom)
• 66% of 12-15 year olds have a social networking site (19% of 8 – 11 year olds)
• 49% of 12 – 15 year olds use gaming sites at least once a week, 47% of 8 – 11 year olds and 30% of 5-7 year olds

and, finally, some Becta research that states that:

• 99% of 14 year olds use a computer at home, at school or somewhere else (97% of 12 year olds)

I looked at these statistics to try and illustrate and make the following points:

• Lots of young people are connected and have access to the Internet. When consulting with young people you should consider using their technology and ask your questions in the on-line spaces that they occupy. You need to know what and where these spaces are first – they constantly change. We need to gather data at a local, regional and national level.

• Technology is changing youth culture – whether we agree with it or not the mobile phone and the holiday statistic is a good example of this. If we asked the same question 5 years ago the percentage would be a lot less and ten years ago it would have been practically 0%.

• Technology has changed language. The ‘friends’ example is a good illustration of this. Young people do not have the same definition of a ‘friend’ as an adult does. The language that we use when we engage with young people is very important.

• The way that children interact with social networking spaces are changing. Most 5 year olds who currently take part in social networking sites will do so through 3D avatar based environments. They will never grow into ‘text driven’ social networking spaces – why would they want too? This is why safe and responsible use in 3D virtual worlds is one of the key messages that we need to be getting across to children (from the age of 3+)

• Social gaming is on the rise with nearly 73, 000, 000 people using FarmVille in April 2010. More thought needs to go in to how we use games to engage more with young people. The Learning and Teaching Scotland Consolarum is a good example of this.

3. Changing Markets

Next we spent a bit of time looking at changing markets in particular looking at Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon and how strategically they all continue to  move in on each others turf.

The main point of this part of the presentation was to flag up the importance of mobile in emerging markets and how increasingly this will play an important role in the future of socilety.

I also mentioned how young people often use their mobile phone credit as a credit card to buy goods on line. Working with parents and local communities is important to make sure they are aware of such technologies.

4. Changing Technology

  During this section of the presentation we looked at the changing technologies available in schools. In particularly we looked at the balance between the cost of technology and the end benefit to the learner (eg: Interactive whiteboards vs flip video camera).

I showed some examples from the recent RM Strategic Forums and some of the equipment that we now find in schools. In particular, we discussed the important if ICT infastructure to allow students to connect wireless devices to the Internet (phones, iPods, PSPs, netbooks etc…)

Finally, we discussed how technology like voice to text recognition and immersive gaming might have an impact how young people live, learn and play. More on this in a seperate post.

5. Key Skills

This section of the presentation focused on key skills that are required by young people in the 21st Century.

The skills I covered were:

i) Being digitally literate and the ability for young people to be able to evaluate electronic sources.

ii) Privacy and how it doesn’t really exist – I linked this to the importance of digital footprints.

iii) Intellectual property and how it is the oil of the 21st century.

6. Barriers

In the final section of the presentation I talked about barriers to the use of technology and young people.

The barriers I mentioned were:

i) Barrier: Children will misuse technology

Solution: accept that children have always misused technology the key now is (as always) to teach responsible use.

ii) Barrier: Professional development

Solution: Many ICT tools now have a low skills threshold we just need to help practitioners find them. We also need to move to a model of drip feed CPD.

iii) Barrier: Time

Solution: Accept that engaging pedagogy create class time because the classroom teacher is less likely to tied up with low level discipline.

iv) Barrier: It will never happen

Solution: accept that the technology revolution is already happening and has always been happening.

v) Barrier: The digital divide

Solution: Accept that the grass always looks greener and that also the real digital divide is global not local.

7. Feedback

If you were at the presentation please feel free to leave your feedback below or contact me by email (details top right)


 

Comments

[twitter.com/cullaloe]

There's a danger that the pace of change is allowing gross over simplifications in assessments of the benefits of technologies in education, resulting in at best, wasted public resources and worse, further damage to our unprincipled education system. Ollie, you have done it yourself in this post. For example, scrabble on the board is a very substantially different game to just making words and scoring points: it is far more intellectually subtle than that and it is this subtlety that is is invisible to your analysis: the Alice example underlines this. The development of literacy skills is slowed down in a simplified medium such as is emulated by the device based books. Technologies mimick something else and do so in a lesser way. Take the interactive whiteboard for example, when it mimicks a blackboard it does so in a significantly inferior way. The capitalisation of that by the technology companies has been a wicked abuse of public trust and delivers almost nothing of value in the classroom for ten times the cost of what it tries to replace.

The far sighted head teacher will keep a black/whiteboard in every classroom: books on every shelf: pens and pencils in every desk: scrabble, chess and ludo in every library/learning space.

"Digital divide" is a cynical term which tries to intimidate people who are not "with it" that they are somehow lacking by comparison with those who are. I am a technophile, as you well know, but I heard alarm bells ringing as soon as I saw my first IWB. This post of yours scares the diddly out of me because head teachers and others that read and act upon it are not principled enough to recognise the potential for damage that digital technologies can do to our children.

[Ollie Bray]

I don’t know why the post should scare you Nick and I don’t know what head teachers would act on apart from my suggestions on overcoming barriers at the bottom of the post. I do hope that it would get them thinking though…

First of all I have not made an analysis on either scrabble or Alice?

At no point have I said that Alice for the iPad is better than the free paper version of the book or that scrabble the board game is better that seek and spell. I have said that they ‘may or may not be’ – my point is that people have to make up their own minds but that they do have to think about it. That is why both captions on the Alice and the scrabble slide say ‘what is the difference?’.

Again I’m not sure what your point about Interactive whiteboards is either – my point was about cost benefit analysis and how much value technology adds. In my example I compare an Interactive whiteboard to a flip camera – two very different types of technology. The main outcome being to try and make the audience understand that ICT is more that Interactive whiteboards and that technology is completely useless in schools unless it is used correctly.

The digital divide is a cynical term – which is why I have said there in not a significant one in the UK – but I do think there is one globally (as I mention in the presentation) and that is the one we should be worried about…

Finally, I think digital technology is damaging out children – but I also, tragically, don’t think we can stop this. Which is why I am completely committed to informing responsible use and promoting appropriate pedagogy surrounding the use of technology in schools.

Thanks again Nick.

[Amanda Gerry]

Hi Ollie,
I was at the Edinburgh University presentation and just wanted to say hi.

I thought the presentation was inspiring and was clear and concise and gave us some real food for thought (Yemi and I were still talking about it at supper that night!.

I think you helped many of us (techniphobes - is that a real word??) understand the many tools we may be able to use when engaging with young people and I am keen to learn more about this, I'm not sure we realised so many already exisited?

Next week we are starting some research with youth work practitioners to explore how some of the tradiitonal youth work methods could be used to engage young people on-line and the consent and privacy issues that we could encounter.

Your presentation has helped me prepare for this event and think about things in a differnt way so many thanks :) Amanda