December 18

The Logan Effect

The ‘Logan Effect’ – that is what I call it, at least.  As a 25+ year veteran of the classroom – finding success at the secondary, undergraduate, and graduate level – it was my great-nephew Logan that shook my pedagogical foundation.  He was not yet four years old when he asked for my smartphone (the picture below shows him asleep, hand still positioned as if holding the phone in which I used to take his picture).  He then proceeded to operate it faster and with greater proficiency than I had encountered with many adults.  This was a gut check for me concerning the reality of how education must change to meet the needs of the 21st-century learner.  Christensen, Horn, and Johnson (2011) described those like Logan as the digital natives who have become a disruption within education.  This disruption is due to what Wimberley (2016) attributed to learners who “are different from any previous generation of learners” (p. 68) that “swipe away and move through technology in every area of life” (p. 25).

My great-nephew, age 3.

This ‘Logan Effect’ experience was the impetus for my own research, completed in the first half of 2017.  The purpose of the study was to describe high school general education teachers’ experiences with academic dishonesty in the digital age in rural school districts in southwest Ohio.  From experience, I knew that academic dishonesty is in and of itself not the actual problem. Academic dishonesty, like a bad cough or runny nose, is just a symptom of a far greater problem. It is an indicator that today’s educational model is not in the best interest of our students – our future. As one of my research participants expressed concerning the blurred lines that the integration of 21st-century technologies into the classroom has created, “[since] knowledge is so accessible to them through technology, what responsibility, [as an educator], do I have?” (Allie, interview, May 1, 2017).  That is an excellent question: What responsibility, as educators, do we have?  This edublog is part of my response and responsibility.

My great-nephew in his kindergarten class, age 5.

Fast forward a few years. My ‘Logan Effect’ experience is further deepened. The little boy who once was excited to learn – to go to school – no longer has that joy that could be seen on his face as he sat in his kindergarten class (seen in the picture above when I visited as his special guest).  To borrow a line from Frozen, one Logan used to sing to me when I would be in another room, “Do you want to build a snowman?” (Vecho, Buck, & Lee, 2013).  Just like Anna singing to Elsa, Logan just wanted me to leave that room – to come play with him where he was at. Today’s learners are asking the same thing from their teachers, their administrators, and their schools – to come out from behind a locked educational door and ‘play’ with them where they are at.  Through such experiences as these, along with my own personal research, I am convinced that the pedagogical framework that meets the needs of today’s students allow them to learn in ways that correspond with how their brains are wired to think-learn-play. So, . . .

Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

 

REFERENCES

Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2011). Disrupting class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns (2nd ed.). New York City, NY: McGraw Hill.

Vecho, P. (Producer), Buck, C. (Director), & Lee, J, (Director). (2013). Frozen [Motion Picture]. Burbank, California: Walt Disney Pictures.

Wimberley, A. (2016). Reshaping the paradigms of teaching and learning: What happens today is education’s future. (1st ed.). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.