The Teaching Box

Students and Online Technologies

I’ll start with a shout out to my friend on Educationation as his recent post covered this topic as well.  Stop by the Educationation Blog for an interesting read.

Introduction -
Found some interesting stuff this weekend. I really need to spend some more time looking at raw data, but these seem to be from reliable sources, so I will throw it out there.  Is what we see here part of the Mindshift of the next generation? Maybe computers are the Mindtools spoken about by Jonassen and Carr (2000).
Note the Jonassen and Carr writing was in 2000. Most of these studies I show are from the last year or so. Have things changed?

Students Actually Use the Internet for Education

Technology Horizons in Education -
Research by NSBA speaks to students using internet for education based purposes. THis study has an interesting component of social networking which is generally prohibited by schools inside the walls of the classroom. I will defer to the Communication Majors as to what “Social Networking” actually is as we would define it today.

Web use may boost student achievement

eSchool News - (registration required)
A couple of interesting Quotes, which really shouldn’t surprise us.
“Learning was enhanced when interface adaptation matched the users’ cognitive style.”
“The internet is the preferred medium for information for this digital generation.”
They speak to the use of visual interfaces for learning such as design of web pages and the like.

Students More Likely Webheads Than TV Addicts

Online Media Daily -
I was part of the TV generation. Is it dying?

Internet Study

Stanford -
Some interesting data on how people spend their time online.
Most of it is not too surprising

In conclusion this data confirms my thoughts that we are on the beginning edge of technology in Academia.
It is worth our time to learn how to use it effectively.  As I have stated before, as educators we need to understand how to use the technology, we don’t necessarily need to become experts.

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References:

Jonassen, D. H., and C. S. Carr. 2000. Mindtools: Affording Multiple Knowledge Representations for Learning. In Computers as Cognitive Tools, Volume Two: No More Walls: Theory Change, Paradigm Shifts, and their influence on the use of computers for instructional purposes, edited by S. P. Lajoie. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates