New Science of Learning
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Endorsements:"The book brings together leading researchers who study how technology can enhance student learning. They address questions of how technology can support collaborative learning, knowledge building, assessment, metacognition, and professional development. For example, a chapter by Howard Gardner and his colleagues describes how students are changing as they grow up with new technologies, and a chapter by Kurt W. Fischer and his colleagues describes redesigning testing with the use of latest in computer technology and learning science. Altogether it is a fine collection of chapters about the latest advances in educational technology." (Allan Collins, Northwestern University - Author, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology)
"Modern learning technologies have emerged in the 21 st century as powerful tools to enhance learning and thinking, but much of their potential remains to be realized. Remarkably, as we explore how learners interact with diverse learning environments, including digital media, we are discovering that these tools also are revealing new insights into how our minds operate and how better to realize the promise that learning technologies offer. This book presents some of the latest discoveries and theoretical insights about how we think and learn, especially through explorations employing digital media. This is a first-class book containing chapters by some of the best researchers worldwide." (O. R. Anderson, Columbia University, Teachers College - Chair, Mathematics, Science and Technology)
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Chapter 1 New Digital Media and Their Potential (p. 3-4)
Cognitive Impact on Youth Learning
Margaret Weigel1, Celka Straughn, and Howard Gardner
The Developing Minds and Digital Media Project, Harvard University, Project Zero, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, e-mail: margaret_weigel@pz.harvard.edu; hgasst@pz.harvard.edu
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1301 Mississippi St, Lawrence, KS 66045, e-mail: straughn@ku.edu
Introduction
In his 2009 book Grown up Digital, Don Tapscott presents a very positive view of the new digital media (NDM). “The early evidence suggests that the digital immersion [for youth] has a tangible, positive impact. Not only do video game players notice more, but they have more highly developed partial skills. . . the Net Gen mind seems to be incredibly flexible, adaptable and multimedia savvy” (Tapscott, 2008, p. 98). In this new order, others praise the transformational power of social networks which can topple (or at least circumvent) existing hierarchical structures (Benkler, 2007; Shirkey, 2009; Surowiecki, 2004) and potentially reinvent civic engagement (Pettingill, 2008).
Tapscott and his like-mined peers do not represent a consensus. A collection of scholars, educators, and concerned citizens counter it. Rather than ushering in a utopian era of self-directed youth learning across time and space, NDM are in fact making us “dumber” (Bauerlein, 2008) and actually harming our brains (Healy, 1999). While Tapscott and others salute the democratizing power of information on the Internet, Jean Twenge expresses concern: “Suddenly, you don’t have to write a textbook or have a column in a major newspaper for thousands of people to read your words. . . In this environment, there is no authority: information is free, diffuse, and comes from everyone. (Whether it is correct is another matter)” (Twenge, 2006, p. 30).
Of course, it is possible that each of these sides has some truth to it; it is also possible that the NDM will not exert much of an effect. In education, for example, despite all of the predictions—positive and negative—about radio, television, slide projector, and so on, the most likely generalization is that not much has happened in education as a direct result of the introduction of earlier instantiations of new media. One reason for the enormous range of opinion about the NDM is that it is extremely difficult to secure significant data on these issues. The ideal experiments—in which one would divide a polity in half, at random, expose one half to the full range of the NDM, and make it impossible for the other half to have any exposure whatsoever—cannot be conducted. The best hope is to triangulate from a number of sources and see what picture(s) gradually emerge. Studies addressing youth engagements online have leaned toward the social at the expense of considering cognitive or developmental implications (i.e., Blais, Craig, Pepler, & Connolly, 2008; Gee, 2004; Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006; Ito et al., 2008). Those who do address developmental issues (Greenfield, 2004; Schouten, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2007; Subrahmanyama, Greenfield, Kraut, & Gross, 2001; Valkenburg & Peter, 2007) are largely descriptive and do not consider ethical issues.
In our own research for The Developing Minds and Digital Media (DM2) project1 (a component of the GoodWork Project2 at Harvard Project Zero), we wanted to secure a more holistic record of change related to NDM. Our research was driven by the basic question of whether NDM may, or may not, be impacting the way youth think and behave. We focus in particular on changes to students’ “habits of mind,” the mental models which underlie and direct how they engage with the world.
