The Net Generation

Key Questions?• Who are the Net Generation?

• What are their characteristics?

• What is their world? Their tools?

• How might this affect their approach to learning?

Facts for thought!

• 50% population under 25• About 21 million teens use the Internet and half of

them say they go online every day• 81% of teens play games online, which is 52% higher

than 4 years ago• 76% of online teens get news online, 38% higher

than 4 years ago• 43% have made purchases online, 71% higher than 4

years ago• 31% use the web to get health information, 47%

higher than 4 yrs ago.• 97% of girls 15-17 have used instant messaging

Identifying the Net-Gen

Matures Baby Boomers Generation X Net Generation

Birth Dates 1900–1946 1946–1964 1965–1982 1982–1991

Description Greatest generation

Me generation Latchkey generation

Millennials

Attributes Command and controlSelf-sacrifice

OptimisticWorkaholic

IndependentSceptical

HopefulDetermined

Likes Respect for authorityFamilyCommunity involvement

ResponsibilityWork ethicCan-do attitude

FreedomMultitaskingWork-life balance

Public activismLatest technologyParents

Dislikes WasteTechnology

LazinessTurning 50

Red tapeHype

Anything slowNegativity

Technologies

Typewriters

Telephone

Memo’s

TV

Family Focus

Technologies

Video Games

PC

Email

CD’s

Individualist

Technologies

Web

Cell Phones

IM

MP3’s

Online communities

Source: Educating the Net-Gen. Available online http://wwweducause.edu/educatingthenetgen

Marc Prensky

• Today’s students represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology.

• They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.

• Today’s average college graduates have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).

• Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

http://www.marcprensky.com/

Cont..

• Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet. We call them ‘Digital Natives’.

• So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology ‘Digital Immigrants’.

Characteristics of the Net Gen

Fast response time

Able to respond rapidly and expect

responses in return

Visual – Spatial Skills

Perhaps because of their expertise with

games they can integrate the

virtual with the physical

Inductive discoveryLearn better through

discovery than been told

Ability to read visual images

Intuitive visual communicators

Attention DeploymentAble to shift

attention rapidly from one task to

another

Hypertext Minds

Ability to leap around and

gather information

from multiple sources

Source: Educating the Net-Gen. Available online http://wwweducause.edu/educatingthenetgen

Examples of their world

Age of Empires Trailer

3D Virtual World

• Every person is a real person in life

• “Party system”• Trade and sell items• Complete quests• Level up and become

stronger• Create clans• Ever changing

environment

What makes games engaging?

Motivation

Problem Solving

Collaboration

Feedback

Critical Thinking

Fun

Social Online Environment

Blogs - Blogspot

Instant messaging – MSN, Yahoo

Voice Over IP, Video conferencing

Skype

Pod casting

Wikipedia – Free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.

E – Learning has the power to transform the way we learn. It is about exploiting technologies in everything we do and using ICT effectively across the curriculum to connect schools and communities and to support evidence-based decision making and practices in schools.

E – Learning can provide accessible, relevant, and high quality learning opportunities so that every student is better able to achieve their full potential.

Enabling the 21st Century Learner

http://www.minedu.govt.nz

e- Learning Strategy for schools 2006 - 2010

Approaches to Teaching

• The students coming into our classrooms today are different.

• It’s about giving them the skills and tools to work and live in the 21st century.

• Memorizing information is not the most important thing in today's world.

• Information is readily available and can be copied!

• We need to teach them how to find, make sense of, and use relevant information for specific purposes.

• We need to teach them to become “Life Long Learners”.

Information Literacy

Information Literacy is

the ability to find and use information

with critical discrimination

in order to build knowledge.

Gwen Gawith

Info Lit Head

What about digital literacy?

At present we measure literacy based on how well people use material printed in English.

Recent publications, looking at technological impacts on education, suggest that there are important forms of communicative literacies that go beyond text and print.

Many students are entering their school or college with multiple literacies that go beyond text, and this trend will strengthen over the coming years.

Educators will need to acknowledge and recognise these new literacies, and build upon and extend them.

Jedd Bartlett – Core ED

21st Century literacy

21st century literacy is the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them extensively, and to easily adapt them to new forms.

(New Media Consortium 2005)

• “The great thing about this (Trade Me) story is that young people can innovate …  what I think is that as New Zealanders we have to be careful to nurture that curiosity and not frustrate it by sticking them in classrooms, putting walls around them and making them all think the same. That’s probably one of the biggest handicaps we have got.”

Gareth Morgan, father of Sam ($700 million) Morgan, founder of Trade Me

The NZ Herald March 6th

Where to next

• Students should spend a predominant amount of their time making themselves experts in areas of knowledge and experience that are especially interesting to them, and then sharing their gained knowledge and experience with other students.

• So, we go from a curriculum model that looks like a hall way that students move down, being saturated by a set of knowledge and disciplines, with little integration of subject areas to a curriculum model that that looks more like a sphere with the student in the middle.

• …The “box” of the classroom will not contain or meet the needs of the new global culture that the Net has spawned

Jedd Bartlett – Core ED

Solution

• Inquiry is the stance or disposition that is required when humans gather together to create new knowledge and develop deep understanding.

• We define inquiry as a systematic investigation or study into a worthy question, issue, problem or idea.

Inquiry Learning, it’s not easy!