Customer Reviews

Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn

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I haven't written a book review on Amazon in over 8 years, but I am motivated to come out of retirement for this one. Please don't waste your time on this book. It does offer some good gems of info, such as the teacher who couldn't get his students to discuss a book in English class, so he created a Facebook group for the class, and asked them to post their thoughts on the book there. These useful anecdotes are unfortunately hidden in a wash of manure. The book is full of gross generalizations about today's youth and their media and technology habits. You've read these facts in a number of news publications, or you probably know enough from kids you spend time with. We get it. Kids use technology. So does everyone else. Kids use it more. Got it.

The author makes a federal case out of multi-tasking, as if no previous generation has had the TV on and been gabbing on the phone while doing their homework. He actually wastes paper defining what an avatar is, and describing how Wikipedia works. At one point he even states that youth "use all capital letters to denote strong emotions such as I AM ANGRY AT YOU." If you're really that clueless, maybe this is the book for you.

The book also discusses how much kids like shallow bursts of information, and states that "even Sesame Street now has more cuts than ever before." Problem is, the article he cites is from 1980. He doesn't disclose this, but I knew this example was outright false, so I took the time to find the referenced article on Google Scholar. The truth is, Sesame Street has been using longer segments, and making fewer cuts per hour episode since about 2003. In another chapter, he shows video and audio podcasts as examples of technology that are more immersive than books. Really? That's so incredibly subjective to the content. I know he wants to push technology, and I do too, but the medium is largely irrelevant there. Just look at how many kids became immersed in Harry Potter books. You can craft an immersive experience in many ways, with many tools and mediums. A great teacher could craft an immersive experience with no physical resources at all.

Those aren't the only instances in this book where he's just making things up.
You could read much better education and technology information on the internet. Please do.

I hate to write a review without finishing the book, but I set this one down two months ago and still have no desire to pick it up again. Since I received it for free in exchange for a review, I feel obligated to write something now. If I do eventually finish the book, I'll come back and make revisions.

Rewired deals with an interesting and important topic, the role of technology in education. The premise is that members of the "iGeneration", who grew up connected to all sorts of technology, have different learning needs from previous generations and that the educational system needs to make changes to accommodate these needs.

Unfortunately, the book itself is boring and unpersuasive. I think it would have been better as a magazine article, because there's just not enough content here to justify Rosen's claims. He can tell me a million times that the iGeneration uses lots of technology and needs technology in education too, but without any deeper reasoning, I'd really prefer to hear it just once.

One example of the lack of content: Rosen tells us on p. 36 (in the second chapter) that "two-thirds of teens say their cell phone is their most essential technology and half view it as 'key to their social life.' In fact, they place their cell phone as second only to their clothing in representing their social status." All well and good, though I'd prefer to see educational policy developed on the basis of trials and experimental studies rather than opinion polls. The real problem, though, is that Rosen repeats this same statistic less than 20 pages later, with no further analysis to justify revisiting the same old data: "According to a 2008 Harris Interactive national study of more than two thousand teens, 57 percent reported that their cell phone is the key to their social life and nearly half admitted that their social life would end or be much worse without their phone. Strikingly, the survey showed that to teenagers, their cell phone portrays much more about their popularity than jewelery, watches, and shoes." (p.52)

If you don't have enough data to fill out a 226-page book, maybe that book just doesn't need to be written right now. I had a similar problem with Rosen's description of an exercise that he carries out with groups of educators and parents. The exercise consists of a "blank chart with generational values and preferences listed on the left side and the four generations--Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, Net-Geners, and iGeners--listed at the top". The challenge is to match given preferences with the right generation; he gives an example about communication style: "(1) Face-to-face or telephone; (2) email or cell phone (3) text message, IM, Facebook; or (4) text message, Twitter, Skype, Myspace, Facebook, iPhone." He goes on to say that he has never had a group get more than half of it right, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. The problem, though, is that he doesn't provide an appendix with the complete exercise, so we just have to take his word that the questions were meaningful. When I asked him about this in an author chat, he responded that it was in his previous book and the publishers wouldn't let him distribute it separately. Again, it seems that he just doesn't have enough data to justify the existence of this new book.

Despite the lack of data, Rosen could still have done well by proposing interesting new ideas about how to integrate technology into the classroom. Unfortunately, he's big on generalities and doesn't have much in the way of concrete ideas. This is presented as a virtue: "It is important to note that I am not going to tell teachers how they must teach and which lessons to use in the classroom.... I will, however, highlight educational approaches that tap into this younger generation's remarkable technological strengths and passions so that no matter what technology children adopt, educators and parents will be able to use approaches to learning that make use of those technologies and help children shed their aversion to learning." (p. 17) In practice, this means that he's just telling us repeatedly that we should use technology in education, which isn't much help when it actually comes to designing a curriculum. He even points out that some past attempts to integrate Power Point into the classroom failed because the technology was already stale by the time educators tried to bring it in, emphasizing that we have to stick with what's new and edgy, but it's not clear how exactly to go about doing this. Telling us in general to integrate technology into the classroom, but to make sure to do it well and in a way that students will find interesting, just doesn't seem worth the paper. If there's limited data to back up the general claims and limited concrete suggestions about what to do, I just don't see the point of this book.

When Rosen does try to address practical points, his arguments come off as extremely simplistic. He defends the use of wireless mobile devices in the classroom by saying that they're not too small to use, based on the claim of one high school student who watches videos on his iTouch all the time. Fine. But this supposed "problem" and feeble "solution" merit as much time as the much thornier issue of the socio-economic divide and whether students from lower-income families will be put at an even greater disadvantage than they are now by focusing education around the trendiest new gadgets. We're assured blithely that wireless access will soon be free or cheap everywhere, and left to go on our merry way. I remain unconvinced.

In brief, I remain unconvinced about this whole book. There's not much data, there's not much analysis, and there aren't many new ideas about what we should actually do. I struggled through the first 90 pages, but it really doesn't seem worth my time to read on.

As a final note, Rosen also said in the aforementioned author interview that he doesn't like reading reviews, because they're "either glowingly positive or point by point destructive". I guess this one falls in the latter category, but I still think there's something to be gained by listening to criticism rather than avoiding it. It's too bad that this review is doomed to fall on deaf ears.

In Rewired, Larry Rosen argues that the students entering today are profoundly affected by the technology on which they have been raised. For example, Rosen argues that multi-tasking is something that these students have come to expect, and rather than encouraging them to focus on a task at hand, teachers should embrace their multi-tasking proclivities. He acknowledges, though, that there is a trade-off: students who multi-task complete work more slowly even though they seem to retain the same amount. There are numerous trade-offs in Rosen's view of education. He argues that teachers should embrace rich technological environments--like "Second Life"-- but schools tend to block such technology. The idea that schools should open up their networks to games, social networks, and other technologies is just one way in which Rosen seems to ignore the realities that many teachers face. He is similarly dismissive of concerns that some students may not have equal access to technology by relating an anecdote about a poor child who still managed to update a MySpace page. This book would have more real-world usefulness if it managed to recognize the difficulties and offer solutions that teachers can use to overcome them.

"Rewired" is a quick, entertaining read that includes some very interesting ideas on how educators can incorporate 21st century technology into the classroom. Dr. Rosen clearly falls into the technological cheerleaders camp in the debate over the impact technology has had on young people (completely the opposite of someone like Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future(Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)). I've personally got mixed feelings about technology, which is probably why I keep reading books pro and con. I don't see it as either the silver bullet that will magically solve our country's educational woes (as Dr. Rosen does) nor the primary cause of those woes (as Dr. Bauerlein does). I believe that it has had both positive and negative effects. "Rewired" tends to trumpet the former while glossing over the latter.

A big drawback of the book is that the majority of the sources cited come either from Dr. Rosen's own research or from non-academic sources like US News & World Report, CBS Marketwatch, the Washington Post, etc. I would expect those kind of pop culture sources from a journalist but not someone who is a professor at a research university. It's particularly ironic given he devotes a whole section in his book to the topic of distinguishing between credible and non-credible sources. Obviously it's a case of "do as I say, not as I do".

The strongest part of "Rewired" is the discussion of the various ways technology can help educators improve their teaching and assignments. In particular, while I was vaguely familiar with the concept of the "Second Life" virtual world, I had no idea it offered anything of value from an educational standpoint. Truth be told, I had always considered it a rather trivial time-waster for folks who didn't have enough of an off-screen social life. After reading "Rewired", I'm now interested in checking out the cool-sounding educational "islands" Rosen described.

Despite the book's flaws, I do recommend "Rewired" to those interested in learning more about how technology can help improve education. Just bear in mind that the picture isn't quite as uniformly rosy as Dr. Rosen would have us all believe.

As mentioned elsewhere, Rosen seems to be unaware of things teachers do because of legal requirements and things they simply don't know how to do, implying that they're either perverse or simply old fogies. He also seems to have little concept of the vast financial resources that would be required to bring classrooms into what his interviewees would not consider boring. Of course, if the pace of change continues to accelerate, we'd have to re-make classroom technology every few years or months. And this doesn't take into account rewriting every lesson plan each time new technology was adopted.

I will admit here that I was unable to finish the book. With poor editing, he presents a graph divided into age groups and proceeds to discuss a grouping not found in the graph. He seems unable to realize that he speaks of young children being more savvy than older children, and talks a few pages later of the way older children outpace everyone in knowledge of technology.

More than anything else, though, he assumes that everyone has a computer, everyone has access to the Internet, and everyone will be able to afford -- all the way back to training teachers and those who train *them* -- to learn and stay up to date with every new technology, let alone keep pace with that technology in an educational setting. It's hard to afford basic maintenance for our schools, let alone the shiniest new gadget.

All-in-all, disappointing. He makes a good case for why kids aren't learning, but little for why everything should be adapted to what doesn't bore them (as if no kids in history have been bored in school). Along the way, more cohesive thinking and editing would have been a big help toward establishing credibility.

As a member of the Dinosaur generation (that which significantly precedes Boomers), Rewired by Dr. Rosen is a real eye opener. His review of the state of current education in the light of the existing and forthcoming technology is at the very least startling. Dr. Rosen's analysis of the burgeoning use of multi-tasking, for me, is a bit unsettling and raises questions that my generational background requires a hope to see a bit more of the future.

The book is easy reading and answers some questions and raises others. At the least, it is thought provoking.

Before you buy this book, consider this: Among the »seven major arguments for changing our educational system to include more technologies«, the author gives (on p. 201):
-iGen students are multitaskers to the n-th degree and are bored when asked to unitask;
-iGen students live a connected life at home and are being asked to disconnect at school.
(Does the first statement apply to driving a car?) I found it very hard to read this book after the first thirty or so pages, but somehow got to the end. I thought I would learn something new, get some useful links, but I got lost among fancy designations and shorthands - like iGen for iGeneration, between statistics and quotes. Yes, there is a decent chapter near the end, but more about it later. There is a lot of repetition. The author's endless enthusiasm and great expectations, concerning the impact of the newest technologies on teaching and learning, quickly lost its appeal with me. Permissive and overly optimistic attitude to almost everything young people do with the technology, even if it runs against all conventional wisdom and medical advice (like being wired 24/7 - p.201), is everywhere. There is, characteristically, one exception: the author finds it extremely rude, if young people interrupt conversation with him to stay connected, i.e. to answer calls or messages from their friends.
The fashionable phrase »learning environment« is used all the time, but concrete examples of a new way of teaching are extremely sparse. There are two »testimonials« on using new approaches (p.122 and p. 213) . In the first case, the only reference is the first name of the teacher and the type of school. In the second case, the references are the first name and age of the teacher involved, as well as approximate geographical location. It is strange that the fantastic results of the student project in the second case ( p.213) are not avaliable online, on the homepage of the school (the author does not give a link, anyway). Neither of these two practices involves smartphones, the author's favored technology. It seems also that the author is not doing, what he is preaching, in his own courses.
The author states that some shy students find it easier to communicate via electronic media. That is probably true, but as I know from my own unpleasant experience, this also facilitates cheating on homework assignments and hate speech.
The good chapter for me was: 7. Media Literacy among 21-st Century Kids. It contains useful information (although nothing particularly new), and could be used in teaching. It would be nice if the author made this chapter available online.

I heartily recommend this book. Rosen emphasizes how the current generation of kids grew up in the digital age and how we have to notice the difference in their backgrounds and use of modern learning technologies in order to find the best approach to their education and how we, as educators, communicate with them as a group. Being educators and parents, we have to deploy a different strategy to support and teach our kids. This book presents an innovative, comprehensive review of modern technologies in education and how they can be used in modern curriculum.

Sorry. But I could not get past the second chapter. It may seem unfair to not read the entire book and write a review on it. Let me make it clear that I read the first chapter and most of the second. What I read does not warrant my spending more time with my nose between the pages.

The initial statistics and arguments lack consistency with what one can readily see in the real world. The first chapter makes the case that tweens and teens hate school and are distracted by technological toys. Really?! Stop the presses! That is a new phenomena. Kids not liking school?

He presents the so called iGeneration as being really hip and ahead of the other generations because they so readily adopt new technologies. Such as facebook and youtube. Where as previous generations were slow to adopt technologies and TVs. This is an unfair comparison. Facebook and youtube are chunks of software on a hardware thing called a computer. For a fair comparison we should compare our generation's adoption of the TV show Friends which is on a hardware thing called a computer to facebook. The price of the technologies is not factored in. Initially Radios and Televisions were expensive compared to cell phones. Parents have the practical need to put cell phones in kids hands because it greatly facilitates the parents ability to communicate with their children. Texting is a spandrel from the arches of parents concern for their children.

The old fashion technologies writing and math with pencil and paper are not given respect. He is poised in his wring to present a plan of action of using more technology. Look at what you are doing right now. You are reading a review that was written one letter at a time on a keyboard.

Writing must be done at its technically most advanced with a keyboard, because writers need the entire language at their disposal, which the keyboard and pen allow access to. Math has to be done with a pencil and paper because when one is dealing with the symbol manipulation that is math, one needs to have access to any symbol one can write and until those symbols can be produced on technology as fast as the hand can, math will be a paper and pencil proposition. (Don't worry I know about LaTex) In higher math and physics(I teach physics) one no longer needs calculators. These disciplines are learned with pencil, paper and the matter between your ears.

Television was initially thought to have the potential of great education. We see just how true that is today.

I'm entering my 6th year teaching 3rd grade and came across this title while looking for "work" related books to read this summer. It contained many interesting points to consider and was worth reading. I have a few friends that are interested in borrowing it and I'm curious to know what they think of it too.