Main Menu

• HomePage
• My Own Learning
• Landmarks for Schools
• Warlick's Professional Page

---

Presentations Keynotes

• Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century
• Cracking the Native Information Experience
• Our Students: Our Worlds
• Telling the New Story
• Harnessing Native Information Experiences for Formal Learning
• Web 2 Conversations

A Few Other Topics

• Making Numbers Tell their Story
• The Art & Technique of Cultivating your Personal Learning Network
• SecondLife a Teacher Primer
• Harnessing the Digital Landscape
• Video Games as Learning Engines
• Finding It on the Net
• Right and Wrong on the Information Highway
• Harnessing the New Shape of Information
• The Post-Gutenberg Library
• Web 2 Workshop

---

• WikiSandbox

PmWiki

• Basic Editing
• ChangeLog
• Admin

---

edit SideBar

Edit History Print Search

Harnessing Native Information Experiences for Formal Learning

---

Several years ago, I was working with a number of teachers in Irvine, Texas. The school district had practiced a 1:1 laptop program since 1997, so there was an important distinguishing characteristic of these teachers -- they were accustomed to working with their students within a digital information landscape.

Native Information Experiences... Provoke Communication Are fueled by questions Are responsive Measure Accomplishment Value safely made mistakes Demand personal investment Value personal experience & identity Reward with audience & attention Associated Links: Native Info Experience Bibliography Relevant Blog Entries: Looking for the Engagable… School 2.0 Currency Games in Classrooms, or Classrooms in Games?

I asked them to work in groups and brainstorm, reporting on group wiki pages, some of the salient characteristics or qualities of their students outside-the-classroom information experiences, i.e. video games, social networks, text messaging.

After reporting and some consensus-building conversation, we settled on the list to the right, eight defining qualities of our students native information experiences.

Initial Session description

There are distinct qualities of our students’ casual outside-the-classroom information experiences that are unique to the networked, digital, and info-abundant information landscape that defines much of their culture. This culture is foreign to many educators and not easily understood for its learning application by neither immigrant nor natives. This conversation-style session will suggest eight of these qualities for consideration by participants (including SLA students). A graphical representation of the list will also demonstrate connections between these out-school experiences and three principles of learning (Donovan & Bransford, 2005).

The objective of this conversation is to better understand the instructional potentials of our students native information experiences and record them, utilizing a closed Twitter-style tool called Knitter. In addition, conversations will be structured to generate a list of formal instructional practices and lesson components that leverage these qualities for learning. Two conversations will be structured, each running in two layers, 1) online, using the Knitter tool, and the other 2) above-line in oral discussion. The first conversation will identify and describe examples of outside-the-classroom information experiences that align with one or more of the eight qualities. Input from students and younger teachers will be especially noted. The other conversation will identify and/or invent instructional practices or lesson components that utilize these qualities, using the identified out-school activities as springboards.

The ending product will be a concept map or data table that reports the findings. The online transcript will also be posted on the web site, a wiki, for further review and commenting.

Donovan, Suzanne, and John Bransford. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom By National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on How People Learn, A Targeted Report for Teachers. National Academies Press, 2005.