EDUCATION AND THE
DIGITAL AGE
Tom Ritchie
Kent Union President
History Graduate 2011
Themes for discussion
• Generation Y and beyond: internet addicts, or digital
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natives?
Technology, Democracy and HEIs: Is Blooms Taxonomy
obsolete?
‘For lunch today I had…’
Does technology benefit learning, or is it a hindrance?
It’s too hard.
The future for Kent: 2012 and beyond.
Generation Y and beyond: internet
addicts, or digital natives?
• When was the first time you went on the internet?
• How long have you been on Facebook?
• How many hours a day do you spend on Social Media?
What did you do when you studied at university or school?
How many hours a week would you ask your students to
study, including lectures, seminars and library time?
• Average Social Media usage a day: 5 hours.
• Average time on just Youtube in a week: 20 hours.
• Average number of texts sent worldwide everyday:
10 billion+.
Generation Y and beyond: internet
addicts, or digital natives?
There are 168 hours in a week. Based on current statistics
students at the University of Kent:
Sleep for 56 hours a week = 1/3
Use digital media for (on average) 55 hours a week = 1/3
Therefore we have 1/3 of the week for everything else,
including formal studying.
How do you deal with this time deficit?
Generation Y and beyond: internet
addicts, or digital natives?
• Period of Formal Operations (12 years and onwards)
• Characteristic Behaviour:
• Thought becomes more abstract, incorporating the
principles of formal logic. The ability to generate abstract
propositions, multiple hypotheses and their possible
outcomes is evident. Thinking becomes less tied to
concrete reality.
Digital Natives
Wikipedia – Wiki = Hawaiian for Quick.
Digital Natives.
• 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information or:
• 4.0 x 10^19
• How much information do you think this corresponds to in
terms of what was created in previous years?
• 1, 2, 5, 20, 50?
• 5,000 years.
Technology, Democracy and HEIs.
• The power of technology as a democratising force is now
in the top three in the world.
• Look at Egypt, look at the London riots.
• News has never been so NEW.
Blooms Taxonomy
‘For lunch today I had…’
• This is commonly held view of social media, and digital
media. A mundane tool of distraction which has no real
world application value.
Biggest threat to learning.
Neither. These are the tools for
distraction, but not the biggest threat.
Does Technology benefit learning or act
as a hindrance
• 2011 American SATs: students who learned using online
tools scored more highly than those who learnt
‘traditionally’.
• Technology does benefit learning, but it has to be done
fantastically well, or it will fail. Its potential is as a hugely
powerful tool.
• The inconvenient truth.
It’s too hard.
The future for Kent: 2012 and beyond.