U07a1 - Digital Learning/Teaching: Hand-in-Hand They Promote Gardner’s 5 Minds

Considering the fact that wide-spread use of the “information super highway” began around 1994, I think it’s pretty clear that anyone over fifteen is a digital immigrant. Our youth today have more information at their fingertips than anyone previously could have imagined possible. It is our duty as educators to prepare our digital-native students to use everything available to them in a way that will both enrich their lives and create a world that will not self-annihilate. In order to do so, we must be adventurous digital immigrates, leading the way and teaching by example. As we teach we must also learn from our students. It is an important message to them that no one knows everything, so we/they should be anxious to learn whenever possible.

The five minds we should develop in ourselves and in our students are not achieved in a step-by-step process. Gardner does, however, feel that at different developmental stages, a certain “mind” is spotlighted. The “respectful mind” should be modeled at all times. I think we all agree that if we do not show respect, we will not receive respect. Our students need to see this behavior in us. As our students learn more and more, they should develop the “disciplined mind.” We should model this way of thinking by verbalizing our thought processes to our students whenever possible. The Reading Apprenticeship Framework is an example of a “disciplined mind”-approach to teaching reading.(http://www.wested.org/cs/sli/print/docs/sli/ra_framework.htm) After obtaining a “disciplined mind”, students are ready for the “synthesizing mind.” We can assist this development by creating interdisciplinary projects for our students so they can see the connections that exist between seemingly unconnected content areas. We can work with our colleagues in our school or with educators for anywhere in the world (using the internet) to create these projects. By doing so, not only will our students learn from the project, but they will have an example in us as we work with people of other disciplines. By working with diverse groups of people, students should learn valuable lessons of accepting differences and celebrating diversity, which lead to the “ethical mind.”(Gardner) Again, it is crucial for the teacher to model ethical behavior at all times. We cannot hope to teach using the old adage, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

So, how do we enhance our students’ minds to prepare them for their new world? We must first prepare ourselves by recognizing that we need to establish new paradigms in education. We cannot teach the way we were taught. We must be adventurous digital immigrates and encourage our students to be adventurous digital natives. In order to keep up with new digital tools, we can read blogs on new technology. The Discovery Educator Network Pennsylvania http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/pennsylvania/ is an up-to-date source for this purpose.

Gardner, Howard. 5 Minds for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008.