Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty. Chris Dede Harvard University © Chris Dede Today's students have been described as having an information-age mindset, being Millennials or members of the Net Generation. While this portrayal of generational learning styles can be oversimplified, the technology and media used by children during their formative years do have an influence on how they learn, as do the media used by adults. However, technology is no more static than people. How Emerging Media Foster Neomillennial Learning Styles Over the next decade, three complementary interfaces will shape how people learn:2 The familiar "world to the desktop. " Net Generation learning styles stem primarily from the world-to-the-desktop interface; however, the growing prevalence of interfaces to virtual environments and augmented realities is beginning to foster so-called neomillennial learning styles in users of all ages.
How Immersive Presence Enhances Learning Situated Learning and Transfer via Psychological Immersion Figure 1. Figure 2. EcoMUVE > Module 1: Pond. The first module represents a pond ecosystem (Figure 3). Students explore the pond and the surrounding area, even under the water, see realistic organisms in their natural habitats, and collect water, weather, and population data. Students visit the pond over a number of virtual "days," and eventually make the surprising discovery that, on a day in late summer, many fish in the pond have died. Students are challenged to figure out what happened – they work in teams to collect and analyze data, and gather information to solve the mystery and understand the complex causality of the pond ecosystem. Design for Learning Specific affordances of MUVEs that help students learn aspects of causality include the abilities to change time, scale, and space.
Changes over Time Students can visit 8 virtual days during one summer. Students also observe visual changes over time, like the color of the pond – clues about the complex chain of events unfolding before their eyes. Effects over Distance Results. Big Thinkers: James Paul Gee on Grading with Games. James: We really believe that in a developed country like ours any person who has only standard skills or standardized skills they can be taught anywhere in the world now, and they can be done a lot more cheaply in low-cost centers.
And so people are going to-- if they're going to survive in a developed country outside of low-level service work, they're going to have to have innovation and creativity. And so the form of schooling that we engage in basically privileges people who know a lot of facts but can't solve problems with them is on its last legs. It will not be economically prosperous form of schooling for us. Interviewer: What's next? One of the first games I played was a great game called Deus Ex, very complicated game and like any good baby boomer I read the game manual. In games like Civilization you know where it comes with an encyclopedia people don't read the encyclopedia and then play.
Narrator: For more information on what works in public education, go to edutopia.org. Create Maps | BatchGeo. Space: Speaker Series. Browse Resources Verizon Foundation proudly partners with some of the country’s top educational organizations to provide you with the latest topics, tools and trends in education. Created by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ARTSEDGE provides resources and examples for teachers to teach in, through and about the arts. The site includes lesson plans, advocacy and professional development resources, and up-to-date information on arts programs from around the world. Visit ARTSEDGE Developed by the Council for Economic Education, EconEdLink provides teachers and students with lessons and classroom learning activities based on economics topics in the news and real-time economics data.
Visit EconEdLink Presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities, EDSITEment features lesson plans and additional classroom resources about art and culture, literature and language arts, foreign language, history and social studies. Visit EDSITEment Visit Illuminations Visit ReadWriteThink.