Educating the Net Generation

I wrote this email last Friday, and wanted to record it in the blog, because it may find its way to others that would be interested in the information:

Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 15:24:20 -0400From: Jason YoungTo: Ben McNeely, packmug@lists.ncsu.edu, tltr@lists.ncsu.eduSubject: Re: [packmug] e-book on e-learningX-Mailer: Mulberry/4.0.0b1 (Mac OS X)    Ben et al., I'm cc'ing the tltr (with Ben's permission), because I believethey'd be interested in this.  I have some comments below Ben's note on apart of it, not meaning to take away anything at all from the the focus ofBen's note and his mention of this e-book.    --On April 15, 2005 2:00:20 PM -0400 Ben wrote:    > Our new chancellor and his wife recently released a new e-book about using> technology as a learning tool in the classroom. I was fortunate enough to> contribute a chapter to this book, explaining the student side of> learning.>> Check it out at the EDUCAUSE Web site:>> [http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen/][1]>> It is a free download, if you are brave enough to download the full book> -- it is a 300-page document. Or you can read each chapter on the Web.>> I sympathize with Ilian, but I am not quite sure we are ready to have full> integration of technology in the classroom. As Hal and Dr. Robarge have> said, faculty must know how to use it before they can implement it. That> is a slow and time-consuming process. Also, students need to know how to> use technology. Right now, I don't believe students are as techno-savvy as> everyone thinks they are. Sure, we can check e-mail and surf the Web, but> how many can do routine maintainence on their computer -- i.e., set up a> firewall, check and repair for virues, know which software updates they> are installing, etc. How many can switch from the Windows platform to the> Mac platform? How many K-12 students have computer or Internet access at> home or at school?>> Technology is great, but in order to implement it on the massive scale, we> must first look at who will be using it, what sort of exposure they will> have and what resources are necessary in order to make it feasible and> accessible to all people.>> As an institution, N.C. State is a great platform in which to study this> problem and turn out practical, real-world solutions -- if we are willing> to invest the time and money into it.>> Just my humanities spin on an obvious engineering problem.>> okay,>> Ben    My comments, as I want to focus on this part of Ben's note.    > Right now, I don't believe students are as techno-savvy as> everyone thinks they are. Sure, we can check e-mail and surf the Web, but> how many can do routine maintenance on their computer -- i.e., set up a> firewall, check and repair for virues, know which software updates they> are installing, etc. How many can switch from the Windows platform to the> Mac platform? How many K-12 students have computer or Internet access at> home or at school?    my first reaction to this was a somewhat overzealous "Yes! Yes! Yes!"comment, which thankfully was quiet enough that I didn't cause too much ofa stir in the basement of Page Hall.    Our "next-generation of Eos" initiative[1] considers this kind of educationas *fundamental* to the success of the computing environment within theCollege of Engineering.  Without a strong computing education program, ourother efforts with student owned computing, labs, and remote access(including VCL) will not be anywhere near as successful as they couldotherwise be.    In partnership with the Department of Computer Science, we formed animplementation team made up of individuals passionate about changing how wedo computing instruction, the curriculum for the "pilot" course for E115(Introduction to Computing Environments) was revamped last year.  The pilotcourse was offered to students in the College of Engineering that signed upfor our student owned computing initiative[2].  The new curriculum[3]focused on teaching "modern computing concepts" teaching the students abouttheir own computer, viruses/spyware/other security issues, a little aboutnetworks and remote access to NC State resources, and concepts common toWindows/Macintosh/Linux, whatever platform the students have.    What I think was *revolutionary* was that we brought 300 students in thissemester and did *not* provide them an NC State-customized "image" - whichis what many IT people will tell you has to be done to be able to "support"something. We have a few Macs, and a number of Windows machines, installedas they were from the vendor.    We put a lot of IT staff in the first classes to assist the students ingetting their laptop operational (consisting mostly of cleaning up a lot ofWindows spyware and viruses).    And with the revamped curriculum, we had no observable increase in thesupport required from our helpdesk. Initial assessment is that the studentsalso got a lot out of E115 and were excited about it. (it also had reallygood TA's, and like anything, good people make the best projects). Ourassessment director conducted an assessment, and I have only seen some ofthe initial results - but the initial feedback was very positive.    However, getting people really excited about this has been quite achallenge.  It has seemed that most of the people, faculty included, thatwe talk about "Eos2" with - become a lot more interested about thetechnology aspects of the effort (things like our Virtual Computing Lab[4]project that's a part of an overall Remote Access strategy) - than they dothe education part of the initiative.  Perhaps it's because the curriculummight be somewhat unique to Engineering and not relevant to the campus, orbecause it's only a 1 hour course, I don't know.  But it certainly seems tobe the most exciting part to me at least, and that's coming from atechnologist, not an educator.    For now we are staying the course, 97% of our Engineering students arebringing computers, 70% this past year brought laptop computers, and wewant to incorporate those computers in our classrooms, and most importantlyhelp our students (and our faculty) help themselves with their owntechnology - helping them do the things that Ben touched on, and we arelooking forward to an ongoing evolution of this course for our incomingstudents.    Referenced URLs:    [1] [http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/eos2/][2][2] [http://www.eos.ncsu.edu/soc/][3][3] [http://courses.ncsu.edu/e115/common/laptop/course/syllabus.html][4][4] [http://vcl.ncsu.edu/][5]    Jason    --~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Jason Young                        NC STATE UNIVERSITYITECS Systems Group Manager         COLLEGE OF ENGINEERINGhttp://people.engr.ncsu.edu/jayoung ____________________________________________________________