Education nation

Milton Chen

How do children of the net generation, the so-called digital natives, spend their time? Do they devote endless hours to arranging their social lives on Facebook? Or are they up every night gaming until dawn? Are they totally geeking out?

Milton Chen, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, the publisher of Edutopia, might have some answers for us. Milton has just overseen a project which has produced multi-media portraits of the lives of 10 American kids, ranging in age from 9 to 18, tracing their activities from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed. We have included below a video on one of these kids, taken from the Edutopia web-site.

And what are the results? Well, according to Milton, they are quite reassuring; in fact, they are more than reassuring. They are quite exciting. Over all, he says, the kids lead balanced lives. They’re not 24 hour a day slaves to their computing devices; they are doing other ‘normal’ stuff, like playing sport, for example. But at the same time they seem to be using the technology to push the boundaries of what preceding generations could do, putting together information in exciting ways, and, who knows, maybe (maybe maybe??) even starting to work in different sorts of cognitive paradigms.

As if the portrait project isn’t enough to keep him busy, Milton is also writing a book, Education Nation: Seven Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools, to be published later this year by Jossey-Bass. The book distills much of the experience and learning of the George Lucas Educational Foundation over the last few years, but also adds a comparative perspective, looking at educational innovation internationally. Have you heard, for example, of the Glow project in Scotland? It’s a world first, a national intranet for education. Check out their website, and find out a lot more, as Ian and Allan talk to Milton in this interview.