ETEC540: Text Technologies

Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read

Engaging today’s learner has become a difficult task for many of today’s educators. Teachers, administrators and schools are, in many cases, frantically trying to decipher what is needed in order to teach the learners of today. The notion that simply adding technology into the mix of our regular classroom and expecting student engagement to merely ‘happen’, is a false hope all around, though this is what some are indeed hoping to occur. As Mabrito and Medley discuss in their article Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read: Understanding the Net Generation’s Texts, teachers and instructors need to do more than simply understand the environment in which their students engage and learn, they need to work within it as well.

Mabrito and Medley call the new generation of learners the “Net-Gen”, or “Net Generation”. This group of learners is different from previous generations of learners because of their digitally enhanced world and that their knowledge of the world comes primarily from digital sources. This generation of learners is, due to the fact that they have been born in a digital age, the “first generation of virtual learners – learners accustomed to seeking and building knowledge in a technology-enhanced environment” (Mabrito and Medley, 1).

Mabrito and Medley go on to discuss the characteristics of the Net-Gen student and how they are different from the students who came before them. They discuss the ability to multitask and how their brains are “literally wired differently from previous generations, their brains shaped by a lifelong immersion in virtual spaces” (Mabrito and Medley, 2). Their learning spaces are different from those experienced by previous generations, with opportunities for collaboration and interaction, much of it online and virtually, that was not possible in schools before this.

The implications for schools of today are massive. Most schools today, though some have begun the shift, are still trying to engage learners using methods of yesterday. Schools today do not understand, at least not fully, how today’s learners construct their social identity and how important this is for both their personal lives, as well as their educational lives. The people that today’s students make connections online with socially, are often the same people that they share ideas with, collaborate with and create content with, both inside as well as outside of the classroom.

Mabrito and Medley argue that in order to truly engage the learner of today, teachers and schools need to do more than simply understand how they learn, they need to take part in this new learning themselves, and I could not agree more. There is a shift happening with schools that are beginning to take notice and trying to engage learners in this new digital space, but there is still much work to do. Medley and Mabrito mention a couple of different universities that have begun to do this (they give the example of Second Life environments) but they are few and far between.

I recently attended another Apple institute for educational leadership and it dawned on me, yet again, how all we are trying to do at this stage is get school leaders to understand the new environment – we have not yet begun to try and get school leaders to engage learners in this new environment. Educational leaders are invited to institutes such as these and, hopefully, most walk away with the understanding that there is much work to do and that there is much change needed in the traditional classroom we still see today. However, they walk away with the idea that they need to get someone else on their staff to engage these new learners, when really it is they who we need to do this work. It has to be ‘top-down’.

This reading has really resonated with me because it is a frustration I continue to feel on a daily basis. Being a young administrator who is fully engaged in technology and digital learning spaces (though I admit I cannot keep up entirely!), as well as an Apple Distinguished Educator who runs workshops for other administrators, this is a frustration I feel quite often. We continuously argue that the classrooms need to change to engage these digital learners and yet the seminars and workshops that we run to make these arguments frequently still look and interact the same way that the traditional classroom runs. It reminds me of the one and a half hour lecture I once sat through on the topic of differentiation.

Schools need to encourage their teachers to use the same learning spaces that their students are using in order to better understand their students. This is fine, and I agree with this entirely, but I also think we need to encourage our administrators and school leaders, at the top, to use these learning spaces as well. If the leadership at the top are the ones who are able to affect change in their schools, then they certainly need to be able to understand it properly.

References

Mabrito, Mark and Medley, Rebecca (2008). Why Professor Johnny Can’t Read: Understanding the Net Generation’s Texts. Innovate: Journal of Online Education, Vol.4 Issue 6.

INTRODUCTION:

Policing organizations in Canada have an onerous responsibility with respect to providing disclosure in criminal cases. The courts have decreed that police must provide “full and frank” disclosure of all relevant information collected during the course of a criminal investigation to the accused party’s defence team, so that the accused may answer to the charges.

The disclosure of major investigations such as homicides, sexual assaults, and frauds almost always involve volumes and volumes of data. When provided in paper form, the disclosure of many of these investigations can fill the back of a moving truck.

Even in 2010, police are still using paper disclosure as the standard. In fact, defence teams can demand paper disclosure in cases where some other form of disclosure is provided. Paper disclosure is cumbersome to transport, difficult to store, and can take months and months to process and analyze.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the research of Teresa Dobson and John Willinsky on Digital Literacy to support the use of Supertext software as an alternative to paper disclosure for criminal cases.

ANALYSIS:

“Supertext” is a computer based program which allows a Crown Brief to be prepared electronically and burned to a CD or DVD. The program has a magnificent indexing system and a search function that can take the reader to a section of the document and conduct searches of words and other data which take the reader to that searched field in the blink of an eye. Supertext permits the author to store truckloads of data on one or more DVD’s at little cost (compared to paper). The document could be easily carried in a briefcase, is easily copied, and can be viewed on desktops, laptops, IPads, etc. While it would seem to be academic that everyone in the Justice field would be embracing this technology – quite the opposite is occurring. There is significant resistance to utilizing the technology and it is extremely underutilized in field. How can this be when, as asserted by Dobson and Willinsky, “digital literacy carries with it the potential for a wider, more global access to knowledge”?

Could it be something as simple as the luminous character of computer display impacting the reader so much as to dissuade a reader from this format? As Dobson and Willinsky assert, “there is some question as to whether screen reading might itself pose a literacy challenge. Certainly eyestrain has been linked to reading on computer” (pp. 5-6). I doubt that this is the issue. In my opinion reading volumes and volumes of print material can also create significant eyestrain.

Could it be that, as Dobson and Willinsky suggest, that “print allows a range of opportunities for interactivity in the form of the addition of intertext or paratext, not least of which is the footnote that acts as a stepping off point into source texts”? This could certainly be part of the issue. I know from experience that defence lawyers do dissect disclosed materials, particularly witness statements, and often insert their own comments, questions and challenges at various points on the document to assist them in preparing their defence. I believe that this issue could easily be overcome and that similar notations could be made in digital form utilizing Supertext, perhaps even with some type of prompting by the program to remind the reader of the added notation.

With respect to comprehension comparison across hypermedia and paper, Dillon and Gabbard (1998) report that the majority of experimental findings of controlled, quantitative studies demonstrate no significant difference. So comprehension is likely not an issue, although studies by Lehto, Zhu and Carpenter (1995) and Marchionini and Crane (1994) presenting findings that support the speed and power of electronic searching. This is certainly valuable insight in the context of Supertext – as it cannot be denied how valuable electronic searching would be for defence lawyers faced with large amounts of word documents. In fact, Dillon and Gabbard (1998) conclude that “hypermedia appears to be best suited to tasks involving substantial amounts of large document manipulation, searching through large texts for specific details, and comparison of visual details among objects.” To that end, Supertext would offers significant advantages and might even be considered a Panacea for the analysis of voluminous disclosure. Dobson and Willinsky speak to the effects of networked (multidirectional) text environments and state that proponents of hypermedia feel that it was “destined to improve comprehension and motivation because it mimics the associative processes of the mind.” (pp. 7) In the context of Crown Briefs, the information may certainly be easier to process and digest in digital form. Further support for this can be found in the work of Rand Spiro and his team positing that readers “are better able to follow connections in a semantic sense, and that the thematic “crisscrossing” afforded by hypermedia documents may encourage readers to apply their knowledge in a more flexible manner.” (pp. 7)

A final benefit of Supertext as a disclosure medium is its ability to provide document maps or “fisheye” overviews. Dobson and Willinsky suggest that these “literacy supports are advocated because they enable readers to discern, variously, the organization of content, the extent of the text and their own location in the text.” This feature is extremely valuable to the reader of a Crown Brief on a complex case due to the detail that these investigations go into – particularly in the area of scientific evidence.

So, why hasn’t this technology become the standard when its benefits seem clear. Although it is clichéd, the wheels of Justice turn slow. I can only surmise that this technology has not caught hold in the Justice field, but when it does – it will do so with a vengeance. It will become the standard rapidly and it will cause police organizations that have lagged in the area of this technology to catch up really fast. I would suggest they start embracing the technology sooner than later.

REFERENCES:

Dobson, T. and Willinsky, J. retrieved from http://pkp.sfu.ca/files/Digital%20Literacy.pdf on November 20, 2010