[Air-L] So-called Digital Natives - interesting newspaper article

[Christopher Lueg]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2009, mhward wrote:

> Christopher Scanlon hasn't done much research on this. A simple google
> search would have told him that there has been a lot of work done in
> Australia on the concept of 'digital natives'.
> Most notably, Gregor Kennedy
> from Melbourne Uni has been leading a funded study on this concept - just
> completed, I think. Here's a link to one abstract:
> http://www.caudit.edu.au/educauseaustralasia07/papers/Digital%20Natives.pdf
> and here's one to a very recent article:
> http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet24/kennedy.html

to quote:
"When one moves beyond entrenched technologies and tools (e.g. computers, 
mobile phones, email), patterns of access to and use of other technologies 
(e.g. MP3 players, social networking, file sharing) show considerable 
variation."

The way they researched the topic makes it difficult unfortunately to 
assess much 'expertise' students actually have in using devices/tools.

The following report might also be of interest:

"Google Generation" & Digital Resource
http://lisnews.org/google_generation_digital_resource

selective quoting:
"The study was to establish whether or not as a result of digital 
transition, the "Google" generation are searching for and researching 
content in new ways [...] the study found the the "Google" generation and 
information literacy of young people,has not improved even with more 
access to technology. [...]

Best regards
christopher


> M-H
>
>
> On 21/01/09 12:27 PM, "Robert Ackland" <robert.ackland at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> The following article in The Australian newspaper may be of interest to
>> members of this list:
>>
>> "The natives aren't quite so restless"
>> by Christoper Scanlon
>> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24939539-25192,00.html
>>
>> An interesting look at the existence of so-called "digital natives", and
>> implications for teaching technology at universities.
>>
>> An excerpt from the article:
>>
>> "Despite the hype about digital natives' technological skills, the
>> reality is that most students don't come to class with technological
>> knowledge pre-installed. The question is, why is there such a divergence
>> between claims about digital natives and the realities of the classroom?
>> The answer is partly a matter of class, commercial interest and confusion."
>
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-- 
Dr. Christopher Lueg
Professor of Computing
University of Tasmania
Private Bag 100
Hobart TAS 7001, Australia
christopher.lueg at utas.edu.au
http://www.cis.utas.edu.au/users/clueg/
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