Teaching/reaching the Net Generation

“The Net Generation and Digital Natives – these seductive terms need to be approached carefully. This is not to say that statements about different age groups are useless, but to argue that as practitioners and researchers we need to keep gathering and analysing evidence about how people use technologies in learning." (Pettit, 2011)

The interview, conducted by John Pettit, (the author of our week 1 guidance, so it was nice to hear his voice)  and paper we were given to read focuses on research into the behaviour of First year students within three Australian Universities. IN the interview Kennedy expalins that the research was in part to answer Prensky’s ‘Google Generation’ and also a univeristy stragetic document that had talked about how the university was going to engage with the ‘digital natives’. Kennedy explains that he was skeptical to start with, and unsure whether claims that young peoples minds had been changed could be true, so he wanted to investigate.

After the pilot study they choose 3 institutions, each being slightly different and gathered both statistical dat through a survey and anecdotal data through focus groups. It was an interesting point made by Kennedy that most Australian Universities have some form of distance learning elements to them. Also a good approach combining the different subjective and objective methods. Kennedy also notes that the teachers were also involved in the research.

The findings were varied and somewhat surprising. The research identified that there were clearly students who were completely unaware of some of the technologies. There were core sets of technologies that students understood and used, like instant messagig and mobile phones, but then the rest varied a great deal. IT also highlighted that in some areas, teachers were more proficient than the students, thus staff may be ahead in information literacy, often because they need to be as part of their job.

Kennedy’s obversations were that even though there may not be a consistancy in the technologies that students were used to, but it didn’t mean that these technologies should not be used. What you might do is change the way you use the technologies and think about the access and previous experience of students when using them – thus a need to be mindful of the diversity of students. We should not make assumptions that students may be proficient in some areas and we should also be mindful that it is not the student who normally decides what technology will be used. We need to use the tools, skills and experience of both staff and students in the most effective way.

"Evidence of who our students are must remain an important factor in informing how we use the array of technological tools at our disposal to design rich and engaging experiences for all students” (Kennedy et al, 2008)

Kennedy, G.E., Judd, T.S, Churchward, A. and Gray, K. (2008) ‘First-year students’ experiences with technology: are they really digital natives?’, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, vol.24, no.1, pp.108–22; also available online at http://routes.open.ac.uk/ ixbin/ hixclient.exe?_IXDB_=routes&_IXSPFX_=g&submit-button=summary&%24+with+res_id+is+res18618 (last accessed 7th February 2012).