When Students are Given New Tech, The First Thing They want To Do Is...

Don Tapscott (2009) is the author of the book Grown Up Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Our World." (Toronto: McGraw-Hill) and in it he lists eight characteristics of what he terms the "net generation", the first generation who have grown up in the digital era we teachers are now teaching. One of the characteristics of this generation that Tapscott writes about is the push to customize themselves and the things they use. He writes that net gens like to "modify products to reflect who they are" (p. 78). This goes not only for devices, such as phones, laptops, pads, etc., but also for work, jobs, cars, and almost anything else that can be modified to reflect their personality (p. 79).

As a case in point, the school I work at has recently made a purchase of a class set of iPads for classroom use. I have been spearheading a committee of teachers and administrators whose purpose is to make a plan for successfully implementing the iPads into the grades and classroom (K-12). I have been using a document from the London Knowledge Lab 2013 (http://pdf.thepdfportal.com/?id=61713) that looked at classroom use of the iPads during a three year study both in the UK and globally to help structure our plan.

We recently had a couple of teachers use the iPads in their own classroom settings so far (as trial runs). The grade 5 class used the iPads to work on writing reports using Apple's Pages program, while the grade 7 class used the iPads to do web-based research on certain elements in the periodic table. When the iPads came back from the grade 5 class, they were in exactly the same condition as they went out with no added features, pictures, or customization (something that the grade 5 teacher specifically mentioned she did not want them to do or they would lose the privilege of having the iPads). However, when the iPads came back from the grade 7 class, there was a lot of individualization of the iPads themselves (background pictures were changed, iMessage was used to send information, sharing of pics between iPads, etc.).

This seems to indicate a couple of things. Firstly, the type of task that students were asked to do with the iPads could play a role with respect to keeping the students interest up. Secondly, the trend to customize at the older grade level does suggest a confirmation of both the London Knowledge Lab report and Don Tapscott's book with respect to a student's drive to customize their experiences with the technology.

This raises some interesting discussion points. Firstly, the London Knowledge Lab report does suggest that having personalized access and individual ownership of devices like iPads is "highly motivational" and even a "crucial element in successful adoption and effective use of the iPads" (p. 11). Thus, perhaps the best model is to have a more 1:1 iPad to student ratio. But how does a smaller school with limited income do this? Also, if you are not able to do the 1:1 ration for the entire school, could you do this with upper age groups? Are the iPads the way to go with this type of technology use (they can get quite expensive as well, sometimes even rivaling the cost of a laptop)? Finally, is there a way to lock down the iPads so that there isn't the ability to customize it as easily (of course, anything you do to such a device to try to lock it down simply creates a challenge for students to try to figure out a way around it; furthermore, crippling such a device does go against the ease-of-use aspect of the device itself)?

I end with this: one of the other net gen norms that Tapscott mentions in his book is freedom. Perhaps we, as teachers, are asking students too much when we try to bring a technology in and get them to use it the way we want them to instead of allowing them to have the freedom to use it the way they see fit; in fact, is this not where innovation, one of the key aspects of a 21 Century learner (www.bced.gov.bc.ca), takes root?