Where technology meets history

Living and learning with digital natives
Today was ANZAC day in New Zealand and Australia, the time when we remember our war dead and those who have served in the armed forces.
One of my new interests is digital scrapbooking and due to a New Zealand designer developing a heritage ANZAC day kit, I went looking for information and images to put a page together about two of my great great uncles (Claude and Thomas) who died in France.
What started as a personal family history challenge rapidly became a shared experience. Jonathan is a fairly typical seven year old boy with an interest in soldiers and heroes and he was soon sitting beside me to look at pictures of the battlefields, the graves, the saved photos and clips.

We found a photo of one uncle (Claude) on the Cenotaph site and found the exact dates and where they both were killed. As we read the story of the Battle of Messines it was clear that Thomas was probably killed in the first wave of the German counter attack and that was why his grave is unknown. There was a moment of stillness on Jonathan's face as the information all processed together to form a whole that communicated more clearly than words what a deep learning moment he was having.

Once I finished collaging the pictures and stories for my purposes we did a print copy for Jonathan to take to school with some handwritten notes on the bottom of the pages (He had difficulty reading the ornate Vivaldi script I had used.) We went over the pictures so he was sure he knew everything that was important to share, then he looked at me and asked "why did they have to go and fight in the war Mummy?". What a good question ... a question that has so many layers of answers...but one of the reasons he asked it was that he now felt connected to these two young men. He understands what an uncle is, Claude's neice - my grandmother is still living and he still remembers going to see Thomas's nephew - my Grandad at the funeral home 3 years ago when he died. So he had made some connections about family, about death, about sadness. And for a little while today war was real - it was about us - not some distant fighting in Iraq or Afgahnistan, not high tech weapons that destroy at a distance, but a young man going "over the top" if he even got that far - having survived one day of fighting to loose his life the next.

Could he had that moment of insight without the half dozen websites and search engines we used? I dont think so ... I have heard the stories of Claude before and while they have been meaningful the research we did today was at a different level. We could find answers to questions as we asked them and although there is still some paper research I'd like to do it has been the internet's power to bring information to our fingertips that has triggered the journey.

There was nothing horrific in the images we saw from 1916 and 1917. Compared to the nightly news stories of shattered victims of suicide bombers it was pretty tame. Yet for a moment today I was led to reflect that World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars and 92 years later a child is still asking "why did they have to go to the war, Mummy". And one of our most modern pieces of technology helped a modern family make a different kind of connection and relationship - one with the past.

The opposite of Prensky

Marc Prensky talks about us as adults realising we are immigrants to the digital native's land and not trying to keep up with the technology. The kids are way ahead of us. Looking at these photos the obvious conclusion is that Jonathan (7) is showing his Grandad (70) something on the computer.

In fact what is actually happening is his Grandad is teaching Jonathan how to distort/edit pictures in Adobe Photoshop Elements. I dont think
my Dad will ever stop looking for something new to learn and at the moment he is doing a University of the Third Age online PS CS2 course through Cambridge University. This story started with him first working out which of the tools were available in Elements and then showing me how to improve some old photos I had scanned which where begining to discolour.

Next thing he distorts my mother's nose in one photo! Jonathan thought that was very funny and wanted to know how to do it. So they went to work on a photo of him. He actually got quite tense about the distortion of his face - on reflection we think it is because he is at that age where the line between pretend and real is still pretty thin. So the next step was to give him control of a photo with both him and other people in it. These two photos were taken at the point he had gained enough confidence he only needed some verbal prompts.

As the main teacher of software/hardware in our house just listening to the interchange between them was fascinating. The language Jonathan had to understand and the connections he had to make between fine motor control of the mouse and what was happening on the screen. I had never really thought before how disconnected the mouse is from the focus of your eye. I guess it is a little like touch typing where you are relying on a kinesthetic memory of the keyboard. But I cant imagine many people would consider teaching a 7 year old to touch type.

Anyway by the end of the session he had a new skill he is keen to keep on practising and I hope my Dad was reassured that his ability as a teacher was still strong.

I meant to comment in my last post that the wireless laptop has been quite transformative in our house in bringing computer stuff back into the traffic spots. We have had computers in "public spaces" but increasingly they have been in the quieter public spaces. My laptop tends to live on the breakfast bar or a coffee table and is quite common for all three children to come in and show me something they have just found on the web or negotiate to play a game on it. (Our other next best computer beats it on RAM and processor but not graphics card) 

Some pictures are worth 1000 words especially when you know the story behind them. Easter Saturday morning I got up about 7.30 and wandered through my silent house in search of my morning caffiene. I noticed as I went past that Jonathan was out of bed so expected to see lights and hear the television but no...
My quiet little mouse was exploiting the opportunity to play one of his games on my new laptop (more RAM better graphics faster processor than his hand me down desktop) He has actually sat up slightly for the photos compared to how he was when I walked in.
And what was he playing ... the second day of the school holidays and on my light speed machine? An old version of Reader Rabbit First Grade with a number of tasks related to classification, spelling, rhyming and maths. I actually sat down to watch him play for a while (once coffee was in hand of course) and discovered not for the first time that for him playing computer games is a lot like watching TV with a parent - the better for a shared conversation.

That relaxed time in the morning had several outcomes...

First later that day we had a bit of an ergonomics lesson at his desktop - making sure the seat was the right height in relation to the keyboard and that his feet had a footrest (the old bathroom turtle step is recycled)

Second I was inspired to think about what a game that reflected his own environment and culture would look like. New Zealand is a pretty small market but he was actaully struggling with the American word pronounciation at times in the spelling game (let alone learning American spelling :) ) and while sure there is some value in him being able to classify North American wildlife it would be nice if at seven he was thinking about New Zealand species.

And last but not least it was interesting that the game he chose to play was this one. He had a number of far more sophisticated games in the graphics and entertainment sense but this was the one he chose to spend his time with. 

Missing the obvious

Sometimes you get caught unwares...you assume so much about your child's competency that they take you by surprise with something they dont understand.

A few months back I noticed how Jonathan was having to learn a different structure when he typed in a web address from the writing he was doing at school. Its pretty tricky to be seven and learning that there are always gaps between words, a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and a full stop at the end and then discover that a url has a totally different writing convention. Jonathan has his own google homepage with all his favorite sites bookmarked or showing as RSS feeds. He finds that a lot easier than a browser bookmark index. But yesterday he was trying to find a site and wrote its name with gaps between all the words and needed reminding that we have different rules for web addresses.

The question that caught me out though was him asking for help with a site joining form. He still has difficulty getting his email address right. When I went to look at the form it was for a site he already belongs to. We talked past each other for a little while with me trying to clarify why he needed to join a second time and him trying to explain that he needed to join on this computer. I realised that he didn't understand that his membership was held on the host site's server and all he needed to do was put in his user name and password and he would be recognised whichever computer he was on!

If you think about it ... that isn't the easiest thing in the world to understand. If he wants to play one of his own games he needs to have the CD and the basics installed on each computer and each computer will save only the games he has played on that unit (we have 6 computers in our house and he plays on four of them) But if he plays a game on the Net he can go back to it from any computer and start where he left off...but then that depends on the game and how the site manages its members.

It makes you think about multiple literacies and the different complexities of the world our children are growing up in. And it is a timely reminder that our children still need adults to interpret the world for them.

Our view of the child

I have been thinking how our view of the child influences what we see as "appropriate" use of technology. In fact it goes further than that to what kinds of activities we think children should participate in at all. Obviously anyone's thinking in this area can not be polarised into black or white generalisations but rather they reflect a continuim.

At the heart of my view of the child is a sense of my responsibility as an adult and a parent to facilitate their development towards adulthood. More than that I think a young child as a learner is programmed to watch for those learning moments which build their skills to participate in the world. So my children share in my life and activities. If my life and activities include talking to someone on the phone, I expect my child to be interested in talking on the phone and I do a range of things to support that learning. I provide toy phones to explore, let them listen to someone say hello on the other end, help them understand that you need to speak clearly to be heard, and gradually build thier skills so that at some point they can make a phone call, answer the phone and communicate clearly by phone.

The natural extension of this for computers is that if my children see me on a computer that is another tool for them to explore with me. I cant imagine anyone refusing to let a child explore the world of telephones although we might put some limitations on how and when they do that exploration. The question wouldn't be about wether it is appropraite to learn how to use the telephone but rather the parameters within which that learning will take place.