This past week, I had the best stage seating possible to observe seniors from several local high schools become 2008 graduates. How different this current crop seems from even those of five years ago, let alone from the distant schools of my youth. I observe the same caps and gowns worn exactly as I wore mine - in another century - and I am reminded of one of my favorite Dylan tunes, The Times They Are A-Changin. Catching the flash of digital flip cameras and quick-fingered movements sending text messages and videos on the fly, I wonder who’s on the receiving end of these graduation words, stories and images. The concept of limiting graduation “speak” to one or two of their peers doesn’t work for the Millennials and it will have even less value to the Neo-millennials following in their footsteps. In truth, for today’s graduates the world serves as their audience while we educators watch from our seats on stage. From Facebook to YouTube to Flickr, they are directing, producing and starring in a real-time documentary of how our times are changing.
Today’s learners live in an alien world in which they communicate with each other in all ways not paper. Many of their teachers live in an alien world in which they communicate with learners in all ways paper. These two worlds crash together and bounce apart, barriered by a paper world we call school and buffered by a virtual world we call technology. Caught between these two worlds lives a tweener generation of younger, pioneer teachers who must interface with older colleagues in their paper world and teach their not quite peers who live in a tech world. These worlds, and the space between, result in what may be the critical teaching and learning issue of the 21st century: how do we unite two disparate worlds, one full of teachers who change slowly and one full of learners for whom we educators cannot change fast enough?
This year, I took my own digital tools to the graduation stages, using them to capture the voices and images of young people. You see, I can’t just professionally continue admiring the problem of my own lifelong learning if I expect those with whom I work to figure out how emerging technologies become the learning tools of our time. I must jump in and absorb the language of social networking, of Web 2.0, of 21st Century learning. So this year, I’ve been equipped in my school-to-school wanderings with an MP3 player and recorder and my own digital camera. I am learning to communicate in this different language, and I have to admit, doing so energizes and challenges me as a learner, too. Each of my struggles to acquire a new Web 2.0 skill reminds me that the Digital Divide is real between many adults and young people. This decade’s Digital Divide 2.0 is not just about access to new technologies but also scaling up the skills we need to use it. We educators have a lot of learning work to do in our own world.