While I was reading this book, I found myself in this book quite often. There is no doubt about it, I am definitely a millennial. I can relate to my students and understand a lot of their neediness and longing for approval. I too am very similar. This book justified a lot of traits that I see in the classroom. Getting upset when not understanding after first try, getting emotional if not receiving an A, lack of face to face social skills, not wanting to work through problems on own, asking questions for confirmation. All these traits that we witness in the classroom are problem of the 21st century learner that we as educators are trying to turn around through the integration of technology and apps.
However, we millennials are not all bad! Our 21st century learners have awesome qualities if I must say so myself. This generation offers many possibilities that sometime get overlooked. This generation does a great job of accepting others flaws and taking them in. In the technology world there are many supportive apps and communities that find common ground and interest that sparks communication ad even friendships over. Leading to my next positive to the app generation is they come with a wide network of connections and social ties. When ever in a group somebody knows somebody how knows somebody, similar to the facebook common friends function.
The app generation is a tough code to crack. Through collaboration and the demonstration from teachers, are duty as educators is to teach our students to still be creative even when using apps. Depending on apps to do all the work is not the best strategy and essentially allows the app to do all the thinking for them. No problem solving or creating is being done. Teaching our students to be app enablers allows them the power to use the tool and be the designer and not us to be consumed by all the apps. Another responsibility that I will integrate more in my classroom is encouraging my students to take more risk outside their comfort zone with out the fear of "getting it wrong." Just by taking that chance is a start to empowering my learners and this generation. This is just the start, we all know it is going to take many years and repetitions of modeling and coaching our learners to be app enablers and not app dependent.
I definitely agree with your general sentiment that “The App Generation” is not doomed. The good news is that all of the problems that you mention can be solved. I’ll use validation as an example. While needing validation is a major problem for our students, I think that we need to teach students to self-validate, and to validate each other. This is a problem that has an answer; educators just need to be aware of the problems.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Drew that your general sentiment that there are both positives and negatives to the App Generation and the generation is not doomed. I admit it was easier to find the negatives and be concerned however, as Drew mentions being aware of the issue is the first step in creating a solution. I am not a millennial and yet I still think I have fallen into app dependency and I can relate to students high levels of anxiety. I was particularly intrigued when the book talked about google maps creating a sense that no one is ever lost and the generation no longer has the life affirming experience of getting lost and finding one's own way home. I grew up without google maps but I find myself completely dependent on these apps to navigate. I’ve never had a good sense of direction and now I have a lot of driving anxiety when I drive to new places. I hope to reevaluate my own use of apps and through this experience help apply it to my students.
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