So if you worried that these entries were going to be all fluff, the wait is over.

"As new neural connections form, the most heavily used pathways of the brain get coated with myelin, which boosts the connection speed by 13 times. Then the neural 'bandwith' is stepped up again by as much as thirty times, allowing much more information to be transferred at greater speeds; So if the student is only developing sport or music or chess pathways, those are the pathways nurtured; if the kid only sits on the couch and plays games - those neural pathways will be the most developed."

Ian Jukes was talking a mile a minute Saturday morning and the amazing thing is that I got any of this stuff at all. A real swashbuckler of a speaker,  he practically threw his unsuspecting presenter off the stage, grabbing and crumpling up the man's introductory notes,  jabbing his thumb in the air and shouting, "get off the stage already!" No kidding, this really happened.

I approached him before the session to get an up close sense of him - you know, as a member of the press. I told him I was writing a blog on the conference and he immediately shot back, "you must have too much time on your hands then, eh?"  Yeah, Canadian. Former football player, it turns out.  A real whirlwind of bluster and playful insults.  

But the presentation was excellent, strong organizing point, excellent supporting material, great slides (including an animation of the myelin coating, film of an exploding whale, lots of sight gags), an engaging if at times hyperdriven presentation style and attention to our need for occasional processing opportunities.  

"Over the course of the last few years, all of the previous assumptions about brain development have been shown to be wrong - that the brain is actually highly adaptive, highly malleable; brain cells are being constantly re-organized based on inputs and the intensity/duration of experiences - therefore - you can actually change your neuro processing power.  In other words, the intelligence we're born with is not fixed and our brains are actually possessed of much greater neuroplasticity."

Which means that the brains of the digital native generation are developing in ways that are significantly different than our digital immigrant generation. (See Marc Prenksy on digital immigrants and digital natives). The upshot of which is that schools established to nurture the brains of digital immigrants like us do not well serve the brains of digital natives - WHO MAKE UP VIRTUALLY ALL OF THE STUDENTS CURRENTLY POPULATING OUR SCHOOLS.  (words and emphasis mine, although Jukes was in constant shout mode throughout the presentation.)

Jukes refers to a recent issue of Scientific American Mind on The Teen Brain which reveals that while our generation's brains used measurably different neural pathways, today's teen brain makes much greater use of the visual cortex at the back of the brain. "The average video game takes 40 hours to master, and visual processing skills improve dramatically with only 10 hours of gaming." He goes on,  "87% of digital natives," to quote a relevant data point, "are visual or visual/kinesthetic learners. BUT 85% of test questions in schools are based on text/content recall." So our schools are clearly out of step.

But I do struggle with a related point which he did not address: Do we just ride the wave of this neural revolution, adopt a "can't beat 'em join 'em" strategy, apply for resident immigrant visas and camp on the outskirts of digital land, hoping to learn the ways and have an impact? Or do we just turn over the keys to the ambassador class (see previous entry)?

As I wrote in the previous entry, there are, by definition no digital natives who possess the wisdom of age and life experience that can be such moderating forces in challenging times. It's an old fashioned point and I actually shudder at myself as I write it. We so treasure and elevate the power and beauty of youth in our culture. But they are at sea without the symbiotic tempering of age and experience. And they live in a world we do not and perhaps cannot ever fully understand.

Or can we? I don't know. I learned a new language at age 28. Completely new alphabet that bore no relation to the one I am using to write this entry.  I remain fluent, even though I use it only occasionally. Maybe there is hope. I suppose we have no choice.

To be less our-generation-centric for a moment, perhaps they don't need us as much as we'd like to think they do. Or as much as we worry that they do. Maybe age and the wisdom of experience are overrated. Or maybe the gifts of our age and experience have no currency in the new digital world, no benefit, no application.  How would we know?

Jukes is pretty clear on this point, if only to judge by the urgency of his all-caps full-bore delivery.  We MUST adapt our schools to get in sync with these differently forming brains, to create the best environments to stimulate, nurture and develop our young people to take their places as future creators, leaders and teachers of future generations.

It's the same point Daniel Pink and Ken Robinson made earlier in the conference. And, presumably, why we kept hearing the song in RCMH about change and seeing the lyrics flashed up on the big screen. We must change our schools in radical ways without accidentally crashing on the rocks because of a wrong turn. Our ships are large, our navigability limited, and the seas increasingly stormy.

What they're all telling us is to pack our bags and head for new lands.  Be ready for some neuron stretching, because they're more stretchable than we thought; be ready to stretch the neuropathways of our schools and change them on the inside. Jukes said the digital natives look like us from the outside but very different on the inside. Maybe we won't look all that different when we get there.

Highly recommended tour of Ian Jukes website. Especially because I am cetain I butchered his language while hurriedly taking notes yesterday. Find his entire presentation by clicking the Handouts link and going to Understanding Digital Kids.

Tune in in coming days for those scandalous NAIS images....