Digital Media: A Better Way to Learn
Educators and parents have legitimate concerns about the effects of the Digital Age on learning. Digital media has changed dramatically since the development of the Internet and improvement of wireless technology. John Palfrey, Professor of Law and Urs Gasser, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, both employed by the prestigious Harvard Law School, have written about how the world has been reshaped because of this new digital world in Born Digital. They found that this period “is the most rapid period of technological transformation ever, at least, when it comes to information” (3). This transformation of digital media over the last twenty-five years and the introduction of tools like the iPad create a clutter of information that threaten the ability to think deeply and concentrate, which has made the current educational system obsolete and ineffective. This same technology can be utilized to create the school of the future, by improving learning in the Digital Age.
Digital natives, ”born after 1980,” do not know the world without the Internet, cell phones, computers, tablets and everything else that networked digital technology has provided (Palfrey 1). They “study, work, write and interact with each other in ways that are very different from the ways” their parents and grandparents grew up. (Palfrey 2). Palfrey and Gasser found that digital natives are comfortable with this new technology and experts at multitasking by surfing, gaming, texting, face booking, tweeting and now “instagramming.” That’s why digital natives “have shorter attention spans than their parents, and this technology leads to a ‘copy-and-paste’ culture, where technology enabled cheating is on the rise on college campuses” (Palfrey 244). There are different points of view about the effect of this lack of focus on the brain and acquiring knowledge and whether it is good or bad for education.
Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University and well-known Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts says in his book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, that this new digital technology is “threatening today’s digital natives’ intellectual development” by placing strains on their efforts to concentrate (xii). Bauerlein believes that digital natives are more interested in their digital technology and gadgets than actual learning. He writes, “The fonts of knowledge are everywhere, but the rising generation is camped in the desert, passing stories, pictures, tunes, and texts back and forth, living off the thrill of peer attention. Meanwhile, their intellects refuse the cultural and civic inheritance that has made us what we are up to now” (10). Dr. Neil Selwyn, author and editor from the Institute of Education at the University of London, agrees with Bauerlein that “in reality many young people’s engagement with technology is often far more passive, solitary, sporadic and unspectacular” than taking an active role in learning (372). Nicholas Carr, renowned author of The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, writes, “the neural circuits devoted to scanning, skimming, and multitasking are expanding and strengthening,” however, he goes a step further and states that the neural circuits “used for reading and thinking deeply, with sustained concentration, are weakening or eroding” (141). Carr believes we are losing the skills to think reflectively and make complicated arguments, while ultimately losing our deep thinking skills but “gaining new skills, such as the ability to conduct conversations simultaneously across six different media” (221). The digital native’s brain will need to be retrained to think deeply.
Not everyone thinks the Digital Age is a problem. Cathy Davidson, the prominent professor of English and Vice Provost at Duke University, writes in her book, Now You See It, that “by all statistical measure these digital natives happen to be the happiest, healthiest, most social, most civic-minded, best adjusted, and least violent and self destructive teens since large demographic surveys began at the end of World War II” (154). Dr. Davidson writes about a phenomenon that she pegs as “attention blindness” where the brain only observes a fraction of what is going on around us, allowing humans to multitask successfully (4). Davidson believes that digital natives are unprepared for jobs in the 21st century because they are being educated by a system that was created for the 20th century where subject areas are compartmentalized and everyone takes the same standardized test. Davidson believes that the brain has this attention blindness feature but it has never been used because the mind has been trained to focus by “monotasking” all of these years (281). Davidson argues, “those things that most capture our attention – our learning and our work, our passions and our activities – change our actual brain biology. Recent advances have been made that the brain adapts physically to the sensory stimuli it receives”(15). Nancy Herther, Librarian for the University of Minnesota, agrees that the “brain is in the business of reacting to its environment by continuously rewiring itself in response to external experience” (18). Basically, the argument is that the mind is meant to be “messy” or cluttered and this new digital technology is just testing what is natural to the brain’s function. Even though there is differences in how Bauerlein, Carr and Davidson believe digital natives react to this lack of focus, they believe that the current educational system has failed this new generation and cognitive skills are suffering. They contend that the academic result is diminished. “Teachers worry that they are out of step with the digital natives they are teaching, that the skills they have imparted over time are becoming either lost or obsolete, and that our educational system cannot keep up with the changes in the digital landscape” (Palfrey 8).
It is important to the future that the educational system is meeting the needs of the digital natives. “The most important thing that schools can do is not to use technology in the curriculum more, but to use it more effectively. The technology should only be applied in support of our pedagogy, not for its own sake” (Palfrey 247). For example, to purchase a smartboard for the sake of having new technology in the classroom is not the answer. My mom is a high school math teacher and her school just purchased several smartboards, but no training was provided. Therefore, the smartboards are being used for basic tasks rather than for all the functions possible. As a college student and recent high school graduate, universities appear to be ahead in integrating digital technology into the daily life of a student, at least as the student accesses information. High schools are moving at a slower pace, which makes the transition to college more difficult. For example, many students in this English class have just been introduced to digital databases like JSTOR, while my high school English teacher required us to use JSTOR and other databases, accessing the Houston Library in our papers since I was a sophomore in high school.
What educators really need to do is figure out what learning in the future looks like. To begin with, it needs to be diverse, teach different cultures, needs to be connected globally. “The Internet provides access to deeper, richer information about other cultures” and is the key to these requirements (Palfrey 249). Therefore, the school of the future must be connected to the Internet, but must train its teachers to use it effectively. In addition, access to information that requires a deeper thinking rather than just surfing the net is essential. Universities and libraries are already working on this by cataloging and scanning articles, journals and other information for easy access by the students. The teacher’s job is to train the students on how to access and put this information to use using a more reflexive thinking ability. “Some commentators contend that the capacity of young people to learn is now compromised by a general inability to gather information from the Internet in a discerning manner” (Selwyn 368). This skill needs to be taught on a high school level as I was, rather than a college level.
Additionally, more peer review should be encouraged in classes.
Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers. (Davidson 101)
Currently I have two classes that include lots of peer review and feedback – English and Economics. I am better prepared for these classes than the classes that are completely lecture-based because I know I am expected to contribute to the conversation.
Another solution is the use of gaming to help unravel these educational challenges. Because “games are unquestionably the single most important cultural form of the digital age,” this idea makes a lot of sense (Davidson 146). Technology “like gaming can be used to address the problems to which their use contributes – such as short attention spans” (Palfrey 249). Davidson writes, “game play - procedural, strategic thinking - is far more conducive to inspire science making than is cramming for end-of-grade tests” (160). The key will be how fast software can be developed to address the weakening of these cognitive abilities. Clearly, the rapid advancement of digital media technology and its gadgets have created some challenges to the current educational system as well as the digital native’s reasoning abilities. They are less focused. The solution is to establish the right technology and training in the classroom. This can be onsite or online, through use of peer reviews and new interactive curriculum. Some of these are already being used in schools. The bigger issue is how broad and how quick the damage that has already been done can be repaired. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “We shape our technologies; thereafter, our technologies shape us” (Quote 1943). Digital media is cluttering the digital native’s mind, but if used creatively and intelligently, this same technology can create more efficient and effective ways to learn in the Digital Age.

Works Cited
Bauerlein, Mark. The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). New York, NY: 2008. UH Library Research Guide. Print.
Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. 2011. UH Library Research Guide. Print.
Churchill, Winston. “Speech to the House of Commons.” 28 Oct 1943. The Churchill Centre and Museum at the Churchill War Rooms, London. Web. 14 Apr 2012.
Davidson, Cathy N. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. New York, NY: Viking Penguin Books. 2011. Print.
Herther, Nancy K. Digital Natives and Immigrants: What Brain Research Tells Us. Online 1 Nov. 2009: ABI/INFORM Global, ProQuest. UH Library Research Guide. Web. 14 Apr. 2012.
Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. Born Digital. New York, NY: Perseus Books. 2008. Print.
Selwyn, Neil. The digital native - myth and reality. Aslib Proceedings, 61.4, 2009. 364-379. ABI/INFORM Global, Proquest. UH Library Research Guide. Web. 14 Apr 2012.