Overall, not many surprises really, but should give pause for thought regarding the half-life of internet technologies. Today Facebook is king, but for how long? Three years ago would you have predicted that blogging would be in decline? I don’t think I would have – and I don’t think many Web 2.0 mavens did. Social networking in *some form* is almost certainly here to stay. I personally hope the walled gardens are replaced with more truly open approaches.

• Tim Berners-Lee
• Sherry Turkle
• Howard Rheingold
• Arianna Huffington
• Stephen Fry
• Vint Cerf
• … and many others

A fantastic learning resource.The series itself is good viewing, though in a few places I thought the narrative imposed in the first couple of episodes a little off.  The first episode almost seemed to claim that the big professional blogs (e.g. Arianna and the Huffington Post) as a self-imposed elite attempting to control the blogosphere. But the Huffington Post doesn’t stop anyone who wants to from creating their own blog – and the rise of the professional blog can hardly be blamed for the millions of dead blogs out there. The bit on ‘balkanization’ was spot on however.

In Episode Two Aleks very conveiniently met the Russian teenager responsible for all the cyber-attacks on Estonia. How do we know he was responsible for all the cyber-attacks? Because he said so. The rushes of that interview are not online though, but wish the link between botnets and other forms of crime were hammered home in that interview. The only people in control of botnets are criminals – so if he was responsible for even some of the attacks, what other criminal activity is he involved in? I have to accept though that Aleks was almost certainly caught off guard with the confession – I’m not sure I’d be able to retain enough composure to ask the right questions in a similar situation.

While leaves Digital Nation, a PBS programme from the US. This has a good collection of interviews online too – mostly from members of the public, and these make a good resource for anyone interested in looking at the effects the internet and mobile technologies are having on modern lives. Check them out here.

Certainly, in traditional schooling literacy is not just about reading – it is also about authoring. With digital literacy, in writing blogs or posting videos to YouTube students are using digital technologies while authoring written or visual content. They are acting as consumers of digital technology while producing content. Full digital literacy requires the ability to create new interactive experiences – i.e. programming. This view is also presented by Mitch Resnick et. al. in their recent paper for CACM:

Resnick, M., Maloney, J., Monroy-Hernández, A., Rusk, N., Eastmond, E., Brennan, K., et al. (2009). Scratch: programming for all. Commun. ACM, 52(11), 60-67. doi: 10.1145/1592761.1592779

You can get the report here: Safer Children in a Digital World: the report of the Byron Review

The report has been fairly well received by the media and the industry overall – if not welcomed in its entirety. What I found most interesting though was that the review comes not just in two the usual summary and full report versions, but a third version for children to read themselves is also available.

In ignoring screen-based reading from the study, Johnson accuses the NEA of “sleight of hand”, but I think he is equally guilty of using some degree of sleight of hand in his own arguments…

When discussing the increase in screen based reading, Johnson notes:

A recent study by the British Library of onscreen research activities found that “new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ … “

The study he is referring to is the same one I blogged about here, the report which argued that not only were the research habits of todays youth severely lacking,  but that browsing-based poor quality research methods had actually spread right through the age groups. This is what it means to ‘power browse’. Indeed, if you follow the link in Johnson’s article, you’ll find the following text in the opening bold faced paragraph:

…although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.

Towards the end of his piece Johnson lays down a challenge:

I challenge the NEA to track the economic status of obsessive novel readers and obsessive computer programmers over the next 10 years. Which group will have more professional success in this climate? Which group is more likely to found the next Google or Facebook? Which group is more likely to go from college into a job paying $80,000 (£40,600)?

Aside from the issue of whether economic success should be the measure of education (there are many critics of this notion), this challenge has been heavily skewed by Johnson. A fair comparison would be obsessive novel readers and obsessive computer users, not programmers. Obsessive computer users might well fail – and fail badly – on a software engineering course, while obsessive computer programmers might well go on to earning the high income Johnson suggests.

I’ll close with a comment on a section which is not a sleight of hand, but is I think worthy of comment:

Odds are that you are reading these words on a computer monitor. Are you not exercising the same cognitive muscles because these words are made out of pixels and not little splotches of ink? According to the NEA you’re not, because in almost every study it cites, screen-based reading is excluded from the data. …

Yes, we are reading in smaller bites on the screen, often switching back and forth between applications as we do it. A recent study by the British Library of onscreen research activities found that “new forms of ‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’ … “

I’ll agree whole-heartedly that studies should include screen-based reading. But here we are asked first “Are you not exercising the same cognitive muscles…?” then we are told “…we are reading in smaller bites on the screen, often switching back and forth between applications as we do it.”

This suggests that there is a significant difference in the reading habits and in how we relate to information. Perhaps even about how we think and process information and arguments. So we will be exercising some of the same cognitive muscles, but as the Google Generation report highlighted, we might not be exercising all of the same cognitive muscles.

The ____ Generation. Insert one of:

Google, iPod, Gamer, MySpace, Nintendo, Now, N, Net, Multi-tasking, Benefits, Facebook.

To help you choose I undertook a *highly* scientific survey of popularity of each. I googled each term, and have ranked them below. Try and order them before you see the results – how many did you get right?

• iPod Generation. Hits: 333,000 for “ipod generation”. Confusingly, as well as “iPod Generation”, this also includes hits for the “IPOD Generation”, where IPOD means Insecure, Pressurized, Over-taxed and Debt-ridden. Plus some hits referring to different generations of iPods themselves. Mostly the first though.
• Net Generation. Hits: 203,000 for “net generation”. “Net Generation” on this blog!
• MySpace Generation. Hits: 85,700 for “myspace generation”.
• Google Generation. Hits on Google: 81,500 for “google generation”. “Google Generation” on this blog!
• Now Generation. Hits: 81,500 for “now generation”.
• N Generation. Hits: 80,900 for “n generation”. (Note: compared to other searches, a large proportion of these hits appear to be out of context. E.g. the ‘n’ generation of Nokia phones – a set of models of mobile phone, rather than a generation of youth.)
• Nintendo Generation. Hits: 27,200 for “nintendo generation”. On this blog!
• Gamer Generation. Hits: 23,400 for “gamer generation”. On this blog!
• Facebook Generation. Hits: 22,900 for “facebook generation”.
• Multi-tasking Generation. Hits: 3,430 for “multitasking generation”.
• Benefits Generation. Hits: 2,030 for “benefits generation”. OK, a British one this – as seen on the cover of the Daily Mail the other day. By the same journo who coined the term ‘Sick Note Generation’ a few days earlier.

More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world’s richest information source hasn’t necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989. Citizens who call the Internet their primary news source know slightly less than fans of TV and radio news.

And now, belatedly, time to write up my reflections from Blended Learning all those weeks ago… knowing I’ve got a paper and a half to write today as well.

The subtitle of the conference was ‘Supporting the Net Generation Learner’, which I’ll admit did leave me a little worried that the general message I would hear would be a simple re-iteration of all the usual Digital Natives tropes and clichés. Instead, through the different talks, presentations and lunch and break-time discussions the message was quite different. The Net Generation needs our help.

In this post I’ll try and set out some of the differences between the concepts of ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘Net Generation’, and why they matter.

First, I know that my understanding of the terms is not a universally accepted definitive one – and that they are at times used interchangeably. However, both terms have a range of connotations, and these can make them quite distinct. Making this comparison is also an opportunity for me to revisit many of my previous posts as I try and weave them together.

Connotations of Digital Native

The phrase ‘digital native’ implies fluency, that digital natives are all capable, able and fluent users of technology. Some of the literature on digital natives will go further and claim that they are all fluent at ‘programming’ – blurring the very significant gap between programming an iPod to play your favourite tracks and programming a computer in C++.

We know this is not true. For example, are they really tech savy? They might still be from the wrong side of the digital divide, they really might. And if they are from the right side of the divide, they still might not be capable of making sensible judgments about what they read on web.

The dangerous part of making assumptions about digital natives, is that is ascribes a level of fluency and understanding that is likely not there. And if this mis-information is used to inform education policy and practice then we risk not providing the support that kids really need.

The other (yes there is more!) negative connotation of digital native is the ‘digital immigrant’. Some authors go so far as to explicitly claim that being a digital immigrant means that you will never be a fluent user of technology. To me this seems counter-productive in the extreme – what is to be gained from telling teachers and parents that they will never, ever, be fluent users of technology? Digital super-powers which don’t exist have been ascribed to the youth, and then comes this message to deter older people, who are capable of learning to use technology, from even trying.

Connotations of Net Generation

In contrast, ‘Net Generation’ says that the differences are a generation-gap thing. And generation gaps are something that we are getting used to. Younger generations may like different music or dress different and will be more caught up in a range of trends and fashions, but generally speaking its another generation of youth. Instead of being defined by the musical or political environment around, this generation is being defined by the pervasive technology that surrounds (most) of them.

The environment now includes a huge range of social networking tools. These are easy to use, and let people keep in touch and communicate over the internet. They do not require superpowers to use – in fact the most common use of Web 2.0 is just another avenue for people to do what they would do anyway… chat to friends. OK, they can post pictures and video clips, but the underlying behaviour is the same, just the tools are different. Don’t agree? How about this hypothetical rumination on the ‘Telephone Native’:

“It’s amazing, they just pick up the phone and tap in numbers completely naturally and before you know it, they are talking to one another! I mean in my day, I had to sit down and write a letter and then post it – or actually leave my house. This new technology is amazing. Who knows where it will lead.”

Amazing indeed.

Or, how about this from a piece last month on cyber-bullying on the BBC.

“Bullying has entered the digital age. The impulses behind it are the same, but the effect is magnified. In the past, the materials of bullying would have been whispered, shouted or passed around.

“Now, with a few clicks, a photo, video or a conversation can be shared with hundreds via e-mail or millions through a website, online profile or blog posting,” concluded report author Amanda Lenhart.

Or comments from one of the presentations at BL2007 on students’ information seeking behaviour:

Just as when we had a question about a coursework, our first approach would be to ask another student – and only if that failed would we look to a tutor or the course yearbook, todays learners do the same. You can have an online discussion forum, but chances are that students will often IM other students first, and may only use forums as a last resort…

(paraphrased from, I think, Georgia Georgiou’s presentation “Take a break: How can the net generation learners become reflective lifelong learners”). I can attest anecdotally to the truth of this… this year the students in a particular group of friends each submitted a coursework where they got stumped on the same particular problem and didn’t realise that the solution was in the lecture notes (available online) and had also been asked and answered in the class discussion forum. They had clearly pooled resources and tried to work together… but their approach (get help from friends, ignore the official sources) was as poor as that of similar students in my generation.

Beyond the connotations

This post has already got a bit out of hand so I’ll try and be brief. Past the connotations attached to terms, descriptions of Digital Natives and the Net Generation tend to have a lot in common, but the differences are often there – if a little subtle.

Both views accept that students today multi-task more. Writings on Digital Natives celebrate this. Discussing the learning support needs of the Net Generation, the lack of concentration and the surface approach to learning engendered by this lack of focus are issues raised.

Digital Natives are considered masters of the technological domain. The Net Generation are surrounded by ubiquitous communication technologies, but we can question the degree to which they have mastery over it, or an unnecessary dependence on it.

When discussing learning support for Digital Natives, authors appear to consider how youth are different and how we should adapt our teaching and ways of life to suit them. The dominant theme at the BL2007 conference certainly agreed that todays youth are different. Some of these differences show as reduced attention spans and a greater tendency towards surface and strategic approaches to learning (the strange idea of ‘just-in-time-learning’, where information is gained just in time, written down or applied then quite likely forgotten just as fast – a bit like learning, only without the learning).

Yes, we have to engage learners who are more accustomed to the visual than the textual, but we also need to try and help them learn better how to engage in deeper learning.

Digital Natives and the Net Generation both exist in a rarely-ceasing flow of information – television, video games, mobile phones, texting, IM’s, social networking. But are they informing themselves to death?

The end?

Despite the length of this post, this is my first real attempt at drawing a number of threads from this blog together. Comments appreciated.

You can also find many more links to discussion about Digital Natives and Immigrants here: http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nativesImmigrants