Watching my almost 3 yr. old granddaughter interact with my iPhone and my computer has made me realize that the world for her is filled with objects that respond to her. It is not a silent and still world, but one that can be manipulated simply by touching a screen or pushing a button. She looks for the button to push or the part to tap to make those responses happen.
I got an app for the phone called Bubbles, a very straightforward game where a drag of your finger creates a line of blue bubbles. Then a tap on the screen makes them pop, with very satisfying sound effects. When I first showed it to her, holding the phone and giving her instructions on how it worked, Natalie pushed down very firmly on the screen, trying to force it to happen, which made the game less responsive. She clearly got frustrated with the game, because she couldn’t make it work. Listening to me give her tips only seemed to make it worse. She went away and did something else, then came back and asked for the Bubbles again.
This time I let her hold the phone herself. She climbed up on the bed and lay down on her stomach with the phone in front of her, the only one who could see it. There was silence for a few moments and then her leg began bouncing up and down. Still silence. Then “Popping Bubbles, Nana!” She turned around with a big smile on her face. Away from direct instruction and watching eyes, she figured it out herself.
It is an expected thing in her world that she can drag pieces across Nana’s screen to put together the puzzle. She is not surprised, much less awed, that the bubbles pop or the wheels of the bus turn around when she taps them. The objects in her world interact with her all the time. And unlike in past generations of toys, the tools that surround her draw out her imagination and creativity, rather than do it all for her. She has to explore and test at every level. It is a very different understanding of the world and your place in it when change is not simply based on one’s own actions, but on the reactions of the technology that surrounds you. Growth happens when you and your tools work together. What that means for educating this generation is fascinating to consider.
Middle School Matrix 
It’s the ‘with no direct instruction’ that has me interested. Much like Jack telling me to play with my Mac to figure it out. I am very slowly learning to play with technology to make it work in ways that I never thought that it could.
Thanks for the comment, E. Your “to make it work in ways that I never thought it could” is what keeps me at it. If I am going to teach the next generation, I have to be able to understand the changes that are happening every moment.
Hadley,
Thank you for the comment on my blog. In your last paragraph, you imagined a school where students were on site for half the day, and somewhere else for the rest. That’s exactly the style of classroom I work at. It’s a Middle Years Outreach program. My students attend for half the day, and are to continue their learning at home, with access to the school via wikispaces, email, online content, and web2.0 tools. As I mention in my blog, I have the web savvy, the web willing, and the web-less, and it makes for some interesting differentiation of instruction.
Cheers!
Todd,
I would love to know more about your school. I had a long conversation with our EdTech person here about what the future holds for schools and that’s the sort of model we started discussing. Will you send me your school’s website?
I think that the sort of differentiation of instruction you talk about is going to be the norm from now on, because unless you make a daily commitment to move forward, the world changes too fast to stay even close to current. We may end up with far more than three generations of teachers and learners.
Thanks for sharing!
Hadley
This post reminds me of my daughter. After watching me work with my iPod nano and my DVD player. She sees what I do and will work with it until she gets it right. She is just over two years old and works the DVD player and iPod. Just think of the possibilities.