April 2021 – Melissa Highton

Picture taken by me in the street. No rights reserved by me.

I called out the myths of digital natives again today at a WonkHE event on the Future of Learning Resources.

I am impressed with how long this idea has been perpetuated, it clearly offers a hook for those who want to push for innovation, but it still has an air of ageism and is a worrying starting point for service or course design.

As a reminder, Prensky wrote that stuff in 2001. That’s 20 years ago.

Those college grads he was writing about are well into their 30s and 40s now. They are the faculty, the librarians and the support staff in universities. If they were all “native speakers” of the ‘digital language of computers, video games and the Internet‘ they would by now have turned all teaching into ‘edu-tainment‘ and games as he predicted and we wouldn’t be finding it so hard to deliver good quality higher education online this year.

Is it just me who thinks proctoring exams sounds like a pain in the backside?

I am inspired to write a poem about entymology:

Educe or education means to bring out.

Pedagogy requires a boy child.

Assessment means to sit beside, and examine to weigh.

Seminars plant seeds for ideas to grow, over three semesters or 18 months.

Curriculum is a race chariot, that gets you round a course.

A symposium requires wine, not just crisps and online proctoring is the arse end of what we do.

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Any how, if you want to do it, here’s the Edinburgh University Information Services position: https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/learning-technology/assessment/onlineproctoring