Digital Heart

You MUST check out the thoughtful and well-written paper from Hannah Green and Celia Hannon titled Their Space: Education for a digital generation, inspired by the work of Steven Johnson  (Everything Bad is Good for You) and testing the hypothesis that schools need to respond to the way young people are learning ourside the classroom.  What a concept!

My favorite quote so far follows the heading, Attitudes to technology: moral panic versus digital faith:

“There are two broad responses to this digital shift.  The first is characterized by media narratives around toxic childhood, violence, video games and an apathetic generation of young people.  It is a reactionary response which focuses on the potential dangers of new technologies.  The second is characterized by a technological determinism that hails all technology as positive and potentially transformational.  These are of course caricatures of a much more complex and sophisticated debate.  However, there is little doubt that these polarised views dominate public discourse, and they cloud our understanding of the impact of new technologies on people’s lives.” (emphasis mine)

I can’t wait to read the whole document.  More on this soon…