Ever get the impression that professors just cannot keep up with the technology used in classes everyday? Two professors may agree, so they wrote a book about understanding the technology that separates a generation.
Professor John Palfrey of Harvard Law School and Professor Urs Gasser of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland have combined their knowledge to write "Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives."
"As I stand in the front of a room of Harvard Law School students, there is a sea of laptops," said Palfrey. "I wanted to try to understand the students better."
Palfrey said in an interview for insidehighered.com that the book was written for parents and teachers as a practical guide to understanding young people and their use of emerging technology.
"Keeping up is really an important question," said Palfrey. "How much do you need to understand to teach effectively? There are those who teach without technology, and that is fine, and there are some of us who really want to experiment with technology."
At the University of Massachusetts, some professors and majors apply the use of technology while others use none at all.
"I would say in two classes I don't use any computer technology," said senior Mary Kociuba, a chemistry and math major. "To do my homework, Mathematica and MATLAB are required, and I use VASP for research."
Other students feel similarly, stating that they use technology for many of their classes.
"I use programs pretty much everyday for almost everything that I work on," said Matt Bourassa, a chemical engineering major.
Students using technology in the classroom is becoming increasingly present, as is the use of technology in a career.
"Are they trained sufficiently with technology that they will use in practice?" asked Palfrey.
Kociuba thinks that she knows enough of the programs to do the work assigned to her and that it would be impossible for her not to still get a job without that knowledge.
"You cannot graduate today and not know how to use everything," said Kociuba.
Luckily, she feels that her professors know enough about the programs they use.
"They are the ones who taught me how to use the programs," said Kociuba. "Maybe not in high school, professors in college know a lot about technology."
Professors have to know the technology that they use in class, so there are few who are lost in a digital era.
"A qualified professor would be able to use the programs," said Bourassa. "Most professors really seem to know what is going on, only a few don't."
For Palfrey, his concern is that there is a different level of knowledge and understanding between students when using technology. While some know a good source of information from a bad one online, others just click on the first link from Google.
"We need to start teaching digital literacy skills," said Palfrey. "Not all young people have the same sophistication as others using technology."
Some questions about using technology in the classroom are still up in the air, though. It has both a good and bad side.
"Technology can be wide fully useful and terribly distracting," said Palfrey. "If you use it just to use it, then it can be bad. Now, students increasingly have something to teach the teachers."
One of the main concerns is the question of whether students growing up in a digital age are learning differently than the professors that teach them did.
"Yes, they are learning differently," said Palfrey. "To learn more information, you are more likely to go to Google than the library. But, we are not sure if young people are processing and learning differently on a fundamental level."
For now, the main point is that technology is increasingly becoming a presence in the world, and most students are lucky enough to be learning it in school so that they can be prepared for a career.
Palfrey is a professor at Harvard Law School, where he is also vice dean of Library and Information Resources as well as faculty co-director for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Palfrey received his Bachelor of Arts at Harvard College, then continued on to the University of Cambridge and finally Harvard Law School.
Gasser is an attorney in Switzerland and Professor of Law at the University of St. Gallen, where he is the director of the Research Center for Information Law. He is a Berkman Faculty Fellow and was chairman of the Forum for European Information Law at the first European Jurists Day.
Emily Reynolds can be reached at ereynold@student.umass.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!