Mid-Semester Statement
Upon reflecting on the reading that I have done in this course so far, I have found that there is a great deal to be learned from a close assessment of teen digital culture. Moving into the education field as a high school teacher it is imperitive to understand how teens use technology and how that use of technology shapes the way that they learn.
There are a number of issues that concern me about how the literature addresses the issue of who is a digital native and who is a digital immigrant. Rainie in particular suggests that the generation of digital natives begins with those people born in 1982. I don’t see who this conslusion was drawn with computer technology as we know it (ie the desktop computer terminal) arriving on the scene about 30 years ago and there being over a million Commodore PCs around by 1982. Surely the generation of people who have grown up with an entire life’s experience of digital technology begins at least 5 years before that.
I was born in 1980. I used my first computer when I was 5 years old. I would imagine that most teenagers of the digital generation did not start using technology til this age or older. I don’t think it is as simple as being able to draw a line in the sand that says this is where the digital people start and this is where the non digital people end. To me a computer programmer who has been using the technology for forty years is just as much a digital native, even if they didn’t see a computer till they went to college. For the concept to work it needs to be adopted reletive to each situation.
This is especially so when one takes into account Green and Hannon’s work on the members of the digital generation who are not active users of the technology. I think that we too often get caught up in the potential for a world where all individuals a technologically proficient. This is impossible to achieve. There will always be people who do not wish to engage with technology. Is it really fair for us to completely alter the education system to cater for the most technologically proficient students while leaving behind the non-users and casual users of new media and technology?
Even when one takes into account the possibility that new media is not for all, it is hard to go past Papert’s suggestion that technology in general has left some areas of curriculum redundant. With a calculator on their desk, can anyone justify teaching a 12 year old long division? There is essential legacy information, which should never be lost. We need to strike a balance beetween the content we teach and the technology we use in the classroom.
References
Green, C. & Hannon, C. (2007). Their Space: education for a digital generation.
Papert, S. (2004). Technology in schools: To support the system or render it obsolete. Milken Family Foundation.
Rainie, L. (2005) Life online: Teens and technology and the world to come. Speech to annual conference of Public Library Association. 23/3/06. Washington, Pew Internet & American Life.
