Seven Principles for Educating the Ne(x)t Generation

I am driving down the road the other day and looking into my rear view mirror at the car following me for several miles.  I observe what appears to be a man (father) talking on his mobile phone, blah, blah, blah.  I am watching him because he has that detached look that many people have when talking on their phones where it appears that the brain is more focused on the phone call than the task of driving a two ton vehicle down the road immediately behind me and a potential rear end crash.  Worse still, what I believe to be the man's son is riding in the front passenger seat looking out the window plugged into his iPod.  The two of them might have well been on different planets than riding together in the "family van."  Was this an exception?  Was it the rule?  And we wonder why the American family is having a meltdown.  What concerned me the most was that kid will one day be sitting in my classroom after years of being connected to multimedia with me standing there demanding his attention to learning objectives for the day.  Good luck.

That is why I wanted to post a link to an article by by Helen Sword and Michele Leggott entitled Backwards into the Future: Seven Principles for Educating the Ne(x)t Generation.  Here is how Helen describes the article and the link to it, which is worth reading:

My colleague Michele Leggott and I recently published an article in Innovate: Journal of Online Education called "Backwards into the Future: Seven Principles for Educating the Ne(x)t Generation." While acknowledging and affirming Chickering and Gamson's famous "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (now more than 20 years old), we also suggest some new directions for teaching. Our concluding paragraph reflects on the dilemma in which so many 21st-century academics now find themselves:

"We long to impart a sense of historical consciousness to the 'digital natives' (Prensky 2001) who increasingly inhabit our classrooms; but as 'digital immigrants' ourselves-belated Old World arrivals in the brave new world of cyberspace-many of us speak the language of cyberculture haltingly and with a heavy accent. Our task, then, is to teach our students not to follow in our footsteps but to outstrip us. Glancing back at us from time to time for information and guidance, they will forge their own paths forward-and we can be proud of them for leaving us in the dust."

See http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=389

To give brief insight into the article, here are the principles:
1. Relinquish authority
2. Recast students as teachers, researchers, and producers of knowledge
3. Promote collaborative relationships
4. Cultivate multiple intelligences
5. Foster critical creativity
6. Encourage resilience in the face of change
7. Craft assignments that look both forward and backwards

With the exception of "multiple intelligences" -- which really have no basis in fact and debunked by cognitive researchers such as Willingham -- I think the principles call yet again to educators as "guides on the side" rather than "sages on the stage."