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Chaparral welcomes responses to articles that appear in the
newsletter. Send your articles or letters to the editor to Mona
Field at mfield@glendale.edu |
Communication is the transmission of information. Since the
advent of written language, communication has evolved in its speed and
nature. The speed of communication has always been defined by the
technology used to create the message. We went from stone tablets &
chisels to papyrus & brush to paper & printing press. Each shift in
technology allowed information to be spread at faster rates, which often
led to social change. In most cases, the spread of ideas led to a more
general diffusion of knowledge and a more educated populace, who often
challenged the status quo as a means of fueling human progress.
Examples abound, but consider what would have happened to the ideas of
Galilei, Luther, or Paine if the printing press had not been developed.
The nature of communication is of equal
importance, yet it is rarely discussed. Analog communication, where
signals (messages) are transmitted via a single varying wave frequency,
provided the foundation for telephone, radio, and television. The
nature of communication limited its speed. Said simply, messages were
emitted from a single source, and they had to be decoded in the order
sent. This nature of communication is fast becoming useless because
much of the world is going digital.
Digital communication is based on the encoding
and decoding of information. This may be most transparent during a
typical email session. A person types an email message that is encoded
into bits of “0”s and “1”s; these bits are then sent across a network
and decoded via the appropriate programs so that its recipient can read
the message. Since the encoding and decoding processes are
fundamentally mathematical, the nature of this communication is clearly
driven by developments in processing power and programming language.
Processors are now small and powerful enough that a student can carry
libraries of “books” on a key chain.
In fact, one look at
digital book websites such as
http://books.google.com/ have prompted many to question the entire
notion of a book.
More importantly, the nature of this
communication allows people to transform messages into varying forms of
media. At a whim, a person could read, hear, or see someone recite the
Constitution; and they could manipulate and share the newfound media
with relative ease. It is a digital age, and most of our students are
native “speakers” of digital communication, and we are not. To borrow
Mark Prensky’s (2001) metaphor, we are “digital immigrants.”
I was thrilled when I was asked to write an
article on iPods, because doing so would allow me to address the
potential communication breakdown between digital natives and
immigrants. This is essential to understand because social norms (i.e.,
“manners”) are often dependent on the nature of communication. Digital
tools imposed on digital immigrants force them to reconcile old manners
with new technology, and this can be seen in a person’s struggle over
the right way to answer a new, digital telephone (with caller ID).
Should you greet a caller by name before you are offered a salutation?
This is far more challenging when digital
natives and immigrants interact in person. During a conversation,
should someone remove his or her phone headset or ear buds? In classes,
is an open laptop and lack of eye contact a sign of disrespect? These
are essential questions to consider because there are many, many other
communication breakdowns that we’ve yet to discover. Last month, iPods
made for one such dilemma at GCC. In an effort to help a friend, one
student recorded a class lecture on her iPod. (That’s right, tapes are
so…. “pre-neomillenial.”) The student then took this digital recording
of the lecture and “podcast” it for her friend. (Podcasting is
basically personal broadcasting to anyone with a digital playback tool,
such as an iPod or iTunes) The lecture was, in effect, streamed online
for the world to hear. That’s right—the whole world.
As a digital immigrant, I constantly monitor
my reactions to news such as this, and I find myself grappling with the
questions that all immigrants do:
How do I communicate with those who are
native, and therefore more familiar with the nature of communication?
Should they be allowed to share my ideas so easily?
How can the natives and I grow together as the
future catches us?
Developing a college-wide policy regarding
iPods in class is entirely the wrong approach. Not only would that be a
threat to academic freedom, it would also be completely ignorant of the
digital divide in our classrooms and of the rapidly changing world for
which we prepare our students. Look beyond the iPod in your class— it
is one of many digital tools used by today’s iStudent.&
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