The digital mind emerges when learning from a non-linear, hypertext-based web.
Ask teachers what is their greatest challenge and they will likely tell you that kids today are just different, that most don’t learn like they did.
We adults, who grew up in the closing days of the Industrial Age with an industrial education defined by Taylorism, learned in a classroom with straight rows where the path of knowledge acquisition was clearly defined. But many kids today struggle to pay attention in this highly structured environment. They struggle to be engaged.
You hear a lot of educators talk about this struggle of engagement. The lack of engagement is directly related to low graduation rates, a key measurement that educators use for evaluating their performance.
Maybe the problem is not that we need them to think *like* us, but that we need to learn why, as digital natives, they fundamentally think differently *from* us.
So, we must ask, What if Marshall McLuhan was Right?
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