• Anne Dwyer
• rincondelospadresymadres.pbwiki.com

TEACHING the PlayStation
Generation
Take a couple of minutes; write down when you were born, three adjectives to describe your peer group, your education, your world, when you were young.
• Why?
• Who?
• How?
• What else?

Why focus on Learners?
• “We can only be effective teachers if we know how our clients learn”
• Supporting successful learning requires understanding of:
– Who learners are
– What they need
– What they expect
– What technologies students are using
– Which technologies have real teaching and learning potential
– How we can use the technologies to support successful learning

• What makes a generation?
• Grandparents – parents – children: “the gap”
• Social, ethical, political, economic, technological change and influence
• Every 20 years (sub-generations are shorter: war, disaster, recession etc)
• From generation to generation… expectations, attitudes, rights and rules change.
Understanding this helps us to understand parents and grandparents too!

Schools change from generation to generation

1910-30 the builders, the lucky generation

Lucky =job for life, pensions, one income

The school days of the lucky generation were days of
• Respect
• Rote learning
• The three Rs
• Rule by the rod
• Punishment

Values learnt from a depression childhood
• Loyalty
• Saving
• The work ethic
• Sense of mutual obligation
• Patriotism
• - parents of the early Baby Boomers
• - grandparents of Generation X

• Uncertainty, insecurity
• Political unrest and war
• Extremisms
• Interrupted education
• Emmigration to survive
• A desire to make the world a better place for their children

Values learnt from a wartime adolescence
• Strong community spirit
• National identity
• Pride in the country’s capacity to take its place in the war
• Patriotism
• Sacrifice, saving and hard work
• - parents of the later Baby Boomers
• - grandparents of millennials

The early baby boomers: the
“greedy generation” B 1940 – 50

Parents = lucky generation
Children = Generations X/Y
• A job for life
• Opportunities for promotion
And
• This was the first generation to have a washing machine, a hoover and to be influenced by TV
• Paris 68ers, money makers, pop music: Beatles, Rolling Stones

The Greedy Generation in
1965

Born 1950 – 1965?: the baby boomers in 1975

Post-war Boom Values : children of the lucky and/or silent generation
(thanks in part to the Marshall Plan)
• Optimism - hope for a new egalitarian middle-class
• Social Welfare and guarantees
• Openness to new immigrants based on expected assimilation
• Early marriage, the lucky generation became ‘Doris Day
Mum’, the ‘real Mum’
• Dr Spock
• New houses, in the suburbs
• Freedom: Sex revolution, hippies, comfort
• Live to work - profession and progress

• More openness
• New theories, new ideas: new maths, audiolingual language teaching
• Less authoritarianism
• More democracy – parent-teacher meetings
• Promotion of girls
• The first years to experience the
‘democratization of the university’

Late Baby Boomers:
“we’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time”.
• Wild youth - over protective parents
• Desire for equality – unclear gender roles
• Independent women
• ‘Super Mums’ career, few kids, less time for kids, material compensation
• High divorce rates
• YUPPIES from ‘Love Generation’, idealists and revolutionaries to
‘Stress Generation’

• Consumers (spoiled as children)
• Cynical
• Short-term thinkers,
• Job and money-oriented
• Work to live
• Few or no children
• DINKIES
- parents of the next generation!!!

1980 – 1990: Gen Y/ millennials, the ‘kleenex generation’
• Action people
• Personalised everything
• Super consumers
• Give up easily
• High job turnover
• High partner turnover
– Concentration span of advertisements

1995

Born 1990 – 2005? The
PlayStation Generation

• High divorce rate among parents
• Busy working mothers, inactive fathers
• Message ‘girls/women are better’
• Will persevere, they don’t give up
• Use of thumb
• Use tricks and cheat sheets
• Will and want to express opinions
• Obtain, file and store info differently

Matures (before 1946) • Gen X (1965-1980)
- Dedicated to the job
- Respectful of authority
– Place duty before pleasure
• Baby boomers (1946-64)
– Work to live
– Clear & consistent expectations
– Value contributing to the whole
• Millennials (1981-94)
– Live to work
– Generally optimistic
– Influence on policy & products
– Live in the moment
– Expect immediacy of technology
– Earn money for immediate consumption

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Students who were very satisfied by generation
55%
38%
26%
Boomer
1946-1964 n=328
Generation X
1965-1980 n=815
Millennial
1981-1994 n=346

• Never normally fully concentrate on one sole matter
• Focus is diversified

The PlayStation Generation
… The Zappers
• The generation inventing games
• Without winners or losers, without start or end, and
• changing the rules continuously….
• multitaskers
• know urls better than irregular verbs
• operate in a multi-linear way

Messenger: 24/7, 10 conversations, 150 contacts

They take a non linear approach
Non-linear learning strategies demand a redesign of content: learning assets,
Objects to be accessed just-in-time

• Will persevere
• Use tricks and cheat sheets
• Will and want to express opinions
• Projects – people
• Obtain, file and store info differently
• Over-informed, saturated

• Special, Sheltered, Social
• Team oriented
• Achievers, Anything is possible
• Pressured
• “Yeah, right” cynicism amongst early
‘players’
• Concerned about future but live for today
(still adolescents!)

Learning Style: difficult to
‘teach’ easy to ‘get to learn’
• Twitch speed
• Active learning : Learn by play/fantasy
• Tech friendly and savvy
• Instant return
• Research = surf
• Parallel processing
• Graphics first
• Connected
• CHALLENGE: critical thinking skills

Their dominant interaction modes:
• multi-tasking,
• social networking
• and experiential, trial and error learning with peers

The PlayStation Generation and other
Milennials believe
• Learning is searching for meaning
• Knowledge is communication about meaning
• Digital data and information become a tool forknowledge construction
• Learning with ICT goes beyond understanding of others’ thoughts by generating new ideas of your own

• increasing emphasis on social aspects of classroom learning
• classroom learning : ideas and concepts are actively explored, constructed, applied and critiqued
• students actively engage with learning materials and problem solving, both individually or collaboratively
• the teacher’s role shifting to mentor/facilitator : model processes, challenge students to think more broadly and support students in this new environment.

What do they have that we didn’t have?
• Keyboard skills
• Multitasking
• Instant info
• Connectability
• Over-stressed Mums

What did we have that they don’t have?
• Freedom to play in the street
• Freedom to get dirty
• Throwing games
• Dads who helped us to deconstruct
‘machines and gadgets’
• Someone at home after school
(usually Mum)
• Brothers and sisters

What did Mums use to do (and no longer do)?
• read aloud to them
• help with homework
• check that everything’s been done
• call other Mums to check that everything’s ok
• compare duties and pocket money and discipline with other Mums
• sing to them 5 senses

• multitasking eg talking, not listening; laptops and mobile phones
• poor reading skills
• poor writing skills
• plagiarism
• cheating
• poor study strategies
• low parent interest and control

So what kinds of activities do they need?
the Net-Generation and learning:
• read off the screen
• store from the screen
• look for tricks
• research and projects
• 20 minute interludes

Metacognitive skills of the
PlayStation generation
1. Enquiry based approaches
2. Networked learning: thinking as part of networks
3. Experiential learning: no punishments
4. Collaborative learning: teams and roles
5. Active learning: making choices, act
6. Self organisation: setting goals
7. Problem solving strategies
8. Explaining knowledge to others

In brief -The PlayStation
Generation
• a creative problem solver
• an experienced communicator
• a self-directed learner

• Cheat sheets
• Projects
• Team work
• Copy if it is true, change if it is not
• Find the mistakes
• Copy the best model
• Cut ‘n paste
• Write your own exam (team v team)

1. Cheat Sheets not cheating

• Copy if it is true, change if it is not
• Find the mistakes
• Copy the best model
• Improve on the original
• Choose the texts to be corrected

4. Cut ‘n paste and reference
• http://5purposedriven.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/disney-parade.jpg

• Team v team
• Selected materials
• Specific time frame
• Self evaluation

• A wiki or a blog
• Or an open space and publish homework, exam dates etc:
• You look cool
• They learn more (and have no excuses)
• You save time

• OPTR: Object + Place + Time + Rest

1. Reading aloud
2. VAK
3. 5 senses
4. School websites with homework, exams calendar etc
5. Getting dirty
6. Provide guidance
7. Provide structure – outcome based
8. Encourage ‘can do’ attitude
9. Forums like … ‘being built’ elrincondelospadres.com

• Just-in-time content
• Interdisciplinary approach
• Learning in groups of interest
• Different timeslots (from 20’ to 4 hrs !)
• Personal itinaries, Portfolios
NO MORE curriculums, whole classroom teaching, school years, standard exams?

• Physical activity
• Fearless learning – take risks
• Off their butts
• multicultural classrooms: individualist
• Collectivist? Low/high risk? High/low context? Ascribed/achieved status?
Masculine/feminine? Etc
• Plus …only children

• Comments and Questions