“Students who are living and learning with technologies that generate dynamic forms of content may find the current formalism and structure of scholarship and research to be static and “dead” as a way of collecting, analyzing and sharing results” (Johnson, Levine, & Smith, 2009).

Correct, except they forgot to include the “torture, sheer torture” part.  A colleague informed me that she has just had the *privilege* of experiencing the “we’re doing this for you–it is the latest technology” speech at the dissertation formatting workshop this year.  Dare I admit that I was comforted to hear that she also had to call on every ounce of willpower to restrain herself from walking out of the presentation on the spot.

It was explained to her that the dissertation formatting requirements were designed to ensure that all of her hard work would be preserved for posterity in *the* most state-of-the-art manner–microfiche.  “Just think,” she was told, “if something were to happen to all of the computers, someone could still read what you write by candlelight!”

In the first place, if I am having to read by candlelight, I guarantee you that someone’s dissertation will NOT be my biggest concern at that moment.  Secondly, have they ever READ a document stored on microfiche?  It isn’t a pleasant experience even WITH the right kind of equipment.  I, personally, view the speech as a desperate attempt to justify a refusal to adapt to new writing spaces.  I don’t hear very many people still trying to convince me that a scroll in a cave is *the* best way to store my data, and I expect that this argument will eventually disappear in a similar fashion.  But when I think of the meaningless hours I have spent on a task that has incredible potential to be rich and rewarding, but because of the way it has been framed has instead become nothing more than a meaningless hoop, it makes me physically ill.  And to think, once I finish my revisions, I will theoretically have the authority to inflict the same torture on others!  Woe to the student who comes to me eagerly anticipating conventions!

References

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved February 22, 2009, from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf

The typical textbook takes life and decontextualizes it, divides it into pieces that are so small they are
almost unrecognizable as ever having been alive, dehydrates them, and then wonders why students don’t find them appetizing. Why are we so tied to textbooks anyway? (That was a PURELY rhetorical question!)

One of the many things about new technologies that has been particularly powerful for me is the way it has pulled me outside of my own paradigm. The more I play with it, the more my perspective about EVERYTHING changes–and especially with regard to the ways I think about knowledge, learning, teaching, understanding, relationships, and living. It isn’t always comfortable, but it has been SO worth it.

My point is three-fold. The first is that the proliferation of information and the speed with which it can be disseminated has resulted in an increasingly acute need for students to leave schools equipped with the cognitive flexibility to adapt to rapid change, the creativity to generate innovative solutions to complex problems, and the transliteracy to create and interpret meaning across cultures, genres, and platforms. Yet, there is little in the children’s sections of our local libraries and bookstores that would build the interest, understandings, or skills from which future innovations in traditional fields could be leveraged, much less in fields like design, environmental sustainability, photonics, or quantum computing. The second is that the majority of teachers lack even basic digital literacies (which might explain why so many of the tools critical to developing them are banned or blocked in most schools) and are therefore ill-equipped to guide students toward suitable alternative resources online. The third is that the presumption that children’s interests are narrow and that their capacity for understanding is limited is a very dangerous one. What’s more, it is often untrue.

In The Little Prince, St. Exupéry lamented the inability of grownups to understand anything of real consequence. I suspect that many of the children I know would heartily agree!