See you in Atlanta, perhaps?

This is not about a new generation disconnecting it is about an old generation unwilling to connect. As adults and analysts, I think many people are viewing this from the wrong direction.

Life is about change. The student we teach will change careers a multitude of times and will have to learn and relearn. Isn’t it about time that a mass exodus of adults INTO social networking/ blogs/ wikis/ Second life occurred so that we can relate instead of sitting back and wishing they’d call us on the phone more!

GREAT article!

Hope it isn’t the last.

I am very skeptical of the trend in ed tech (and beyond) to boil many of the over-arching questions facing the intersection of technology and learning to banal, prescriptive generalizations. I was at a conference at CUNY in December and the keynote speaker spent an hour making jokes about the differences between boomers, gen Xers, and millenials. I found the whole thing to be symptomatic of the current (and misguided) compulsion to not only categorize, but to quantify these categorizations in order to feign some semblance of a theory. What is the underlying logic behind this idea? That learning is always already predicated upon one’s age? Which generation is defining the the classification of “learning styles” for the others? How? This approach seems, at least at times, to consist of a number of loosely defined observations and characterizations that have been grafted upon some learning styles pyramid that has been recalibrated by age groups and generations.

Educational technology, as I am experiencing it, is not about classifying learners. It’s about re-framing the spaces and possibilities through and in which students (despite their age) can imagine themselves as learners. Such an approach, carried out thoughtfully, considers and accounts for all sorts of factors that inform this complex process of learning, i.e., economics, race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

Great post, I feel like I was right that at the bar with you.

Kelly – Lots of interesting questions. I do think more families are bound to become more technologically savvy… it will be interesting if this ‘generation gap’ in tech-skills (even if it is overstated now) will close in the years to come.

Peter – We’ll have to pub it some other time! I do think it’s a shame we can’t think of more safe public spaces for kids. In a sense, I would prefer that the void for safe autonomous public spaces that the web is filling weren’t quite so vast and gaping… I would say that the fears around physical public spaces are also overblown, but as a parent I find myself as prone to letting fear (and the judgments of others) determine what I will allow my son to do as most people.

D’Arcy – can’t disagree. The sheer scale of the generalization is the single most objectionable piece of the whole digital native mythology. There’s plenty to learn by paying attention to young people, but in a sense we’re just slotting them into another, if somewhat more positive, stereotype.