REWIRED, a data-driven look at the Digital Divide

REWIRED: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn
LARRY D. ROSEN, Ph.D.
St. Martin's Press
$11.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Look around at today’s youth and you can see how technology has changed their lives. They lie on their beds and study while listening to mp3 players, texting and chatting online with friends, and reading and posting Facebook messages. How does the new, charged-up, multitasking generation respond to traditional textbooks and lectures? Are we effectively reaching today’s technologically advanced youth? Rewired is the first book to help educators and parents teach to this new generation’s radically different learning styles and needs. This book will also help parents learn what to expect from their “techie” children concerning school, homework, and even socialization. In short, it is a book that exposes the impact of generational differences on learning while providing strategies for engaging students at school and at home.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.

My Review: The subject of this book...the way the texting generation is being failed by teachers, schools, and bureaucracies that don't know, don't want to know, and can't imagine how these youngsters *actually* absorb information...is one of un-overstatable importance.

You and I, fellow oldster, are not the ones who should be making the educational decisions of this generation. Why not? Because, on average, we're about as likely to say "g'wan, skip the textbooks, don't make 'em buy a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird, do it all on their iPhones!" as we are to suggest Fahrenheit 451 as a model for the future society we want to see.

But let's be realistic: Do we want books qua books to survive? If yes, we'd best make sure that there are people willing to read them. And that means getting the texters to read, probably via KindlNooReadPad. School has always been the biggest breeding ground for accidental readers, the ones whose families have no books, don't read, and don't care. This will still be true as the texting generation gets their American History textbook via KindlNooReadPad. Some few of them will get the idea: Reading gives me a better picture of my world! Maybe if I read other things....

Larry Rosen makes an excellent case for delivering the traditional educational topics in this new, potentially enhanced way. He takes on the issue of trustworthy content on the Net, and offers some ideas as to how to teach critical thinking about what's out there. (I know some adults who could use his training.)

Frankly, I hate the Brave New World. It's out of sync with the lifetime of conditioning that I've got, in some very uncomfortable ways. There were things about that world I absorbed that I think this Brave New World would do well to incorporate, but I am not kidding myself: They probably won't.

But it's here. And even *I* can see the bold Helvetica signs on the walls: Change or become more irrelevant. So I tweet, and I have a Facebook presence, and I'm on here (sort of like the Old World That Passeth on the Internet, this is), and I even have a cellphone with unlimited texting because that way I actually *hear* from my grandkids. Am I happy about it? Not specially. But here it is, and I for one am not willing to sink quietly into invisibility.

Now why in the holy hell can't the SCHOOL BOARD see this, and do even what little I've done to get with the program?!?!