We're all in the Connected Generation

Nothing turns me snarky more than the assertion that 'we' are but hapless Ned Luds by comparison to 'them', the bright young 'digital natives' (eurgh...) that make up Generation 'Y' (double eurgh), the connected generation who "live through the screen" (pass me a mop and bucket). Such clichés can be heard in almost every educational, future-gazing keynote and workshop one might care to attend and, for my money, are worth nothing more than the potential for a jolly good round of bullshit bingo to keep us entertained during yet another "21st Century Learning" tyrade.

But I've found a great piece on the brilliant and long-standing Mobile Youth blog which explains clearly why I find the gen-y stuff so irrelevant and enraging:

Consider, for example, the parents - are they not also a connected generation? Doesn’t almost every 30-39 year old executive and office worker live out most of their days staring at a screen? On the way to the office they stare at their blackberries, followed by 9 hours of staring at a larger screen. The more active of this demographic will squeeze in an hour at the gym where, you guessed it, they stare at a screen. Evening activity involves starting at a screen.

Almost every economically active individual today is “connected”, so the fact that it is only youth that are connected, is a myth.

Hurrah. Now all we need to do is work out whether the average keynote presenter is 'economically active' when their audiences appreciate the hot air rising from their rhetoric.

Pic: Cow pat

Comments

[AllanahK]

Tempted to use this at next staff meeting. Ooooh yessss. LOL

[Chris]

I tend to use "air quotes" when i say those awful terms in any discussion.

[Karyn Romeis]

One of my bugbears - this digital immigrant/native nonsense, and so unhelpful! Just yesterday I was trying to explain to a 19 year old unversity student what was wrong with the fact that he had listed his email addresses as websites, simply by virtue of adding http:// in front. He didn't have a clue!

I pretty much 'live throught the screen' myself and Stephen Downes once said that even his personal relationships had their origins online (he'll be 50 next year).

Can't we just get over this nonsense?

[Mathias Poulsen]

Oh, how I do agree.

This misconception has somehow succeeded to blind almost everybody, not least in the educational system.

As a rather unfortunate consequence, most teachers hardly dare confronting the childrens competencies - as they're expected to be SO much smarter, that it'll probably be nothing but embarrasing, leaving the poor teacher as a helpless fool.

Yet it seems obvious, that the so-called digital divide is not really that dividing, as well as digital natives aren't really all that native - when seen as a whole.

The real problem - in my opinion - is this rather popular tendency to be generalizing every single finding or conclusion.

I bet Prensky's use of the terms native/immigrants primarily served the purpose of gaining exposure to his ideas.

Hey, who wants the big, complex picture, when a useful dichotomy is readily at hand?

For further reading on this subject, I'd recommend "Questioning the Generational Divide" by Susan C. Herring in "Youth, Identity, and Digital Media" - right here.

[Jaye Richards]

No no no, have to disagree. Ok, the media luvie types you might hang with now Ewan might spend most of the day looking at their assorted screens, but the majority of adults don't. And even those who do don't use the same apps or the same style as the kids. There is most definitely a digital divide. Maybe the ages on the borders are blurring a little, but its still there, and very visible in most schools too !

[Sharon]

Oh yes, I have to agree on this one.

I too am tired of the digital immigrant nonsense. It is time that it was put to rest for good. The distinction was/is a gross over generalization.

Those of us who walked around with our stacks of punch cards during the 60's were actually on to something.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Jaye, I don't really spend my day with media luvvies. I spend it with people working in the creative industries, for sure, but with accountants, compliance experts, lawyers, project managers, company directors, PAs, secretaries, receptionists, coders, scientists... the list goes on. Nearly everyone I work with does use a screen on a daily basis. So does the guy using the checkout at the supermarket.

I've done some research into how many people might be using a screen in their workplace (it took about 5 minutes on the Nat Office of Stats site) and have added it to the post above.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Update: Jaye seems to doubt that quite so many adults work behind the screen, so I did a quick and dirty piece of research into things. It's unscientific, but an effort at least:

80.5% of the employed in the UK work in the private sector, the rest in pubic sector. In the pubic sector we have core jobs: teachers (might use a screen every day), managers (use a screen every day), workers out and about in the community (watch a screen every night), police (use a screen every day), medical staff (ditto), cleaners (screen at night...) and so on...

In the private sector it's impossible to go through every possible job. However, the finance and creative industries account for the most GDP, in first and second order respectively. Both are 'screen intensive' sectors. Thereafter we have the service industries and manufacturing. Both could involve using screens to input data (prices, instructions, programming) but the people in these areas almost certainly watch a great deal of television and use the web in their free time.

To claim that the active members of our economy do not live and work through the screen is just plain wrong.

[jaye richards]

Sorry, but you are just plain wrong to relate GDP to employee numbers. that just does not stack up. look at the public sector in Scotland - a quick and dirty piece of research into my own LA reveals a big majority of its employees work away from their 'screens' making, driving, cleaning etc. As to your definition of a screen - well many would disagree that a TV is being 'connected' including Clay Shirky for one. Just because these folk are staring at screens does not in any way shape or form imply connectivity, unlike the digital natives who interact, create and share. Thats why they are called so, and why so many are just recent immigrants to this world, and why many are yet to emigrate. Prensky was right on the money with this, and educationalists also need to recognise it, work with it and bridge the divide to engage and empower kids with control over their own futures. All the media sneering at these terms, unsophisticated as they are, will not change this. Don't you think the problem might actually be that there are too many commentators and not enough actual do-ers ? because its the do-ers who can tell the true story...

[Ewan McIntosh]

I'm with you, Jaye, that the public sector remains perhaps the least likely place to see connective tissue in technology use, and I've been "doing" some stuff in that area since 2001.

But the bone I was picking was with the association of "living one's life through a screen" with some kind of younger generation. I still think that language of this sort, which peppers Prensky's work, starts to make arguments weaker and irrelevant.

The debate about what you do with that screen, whether it's connected or not, is another different debate, on which we almost certainly see entirely eye-to-eye.

And, yes, I think there are far too many commentators who haven't done anything in the area of connective participative media and learning in a long time. Happily, I ain't one of them.

[jaye richards]

That last paragraph goes without saying of course !It was you and AB who got me my digital immigrant visa in the first place...

[Ewan McIntosh]

I was thinking about the connectivity thing, and think the reason I don't believe (now) in the digital natives thesis, although I used to, is that most of the connective technology in use by younger generations (SNSes, video sharing, peer-to-peer) has only been around in its current state in the past three years. We've ALL had the opportunity to pick up the language at the same time. Many adults (you included) have done so. Many haven't. The challenge is not so much to identify what might have been called digital immigrants in the past, but to help what we might call the "digital remedials". It's not intended to be cheeky - just a wake-up call to those who maybe, with Prensky's thesis, thought they had an excuse or reason for understanding this connected world any less than our 12 year olds.

[Mathias Poulsen]

Well, without trying to be pedantic beyond reason, this quote shows why I both agree and disagree with you, Jaye - for different reasons:
[...] unlike the digital natives who interact, create and share. Thats why they are called so, and why so many are just recent immigrants to this world, and why many are yet to emigrate. Prensky was right on the money with this, and educationalists also need to recognise it, work with it and bridge the divide to engage and empower kids with control over their own futures.

By saying "unlike the digital natives who interact, create and share" you underscore my previous argument; that all we achieve by dichotomizing things is unclarity, misunderstandings and confusion. By treating "digital natives" as one homogeneous group consisting of every member of younger generations, we tend to believe that every child or youngster is a highly competent user of digital media.

This is NOT always the case - by far! You won't have to spend very much time among kids to realise this; using computers, they often encounter even small, trivial problems, which they just don't possess the knowledge or qualifications to solve. Sometimes the problem means something to them, and they work hard to learn what is needed - or work around the problem. At other times, they just ignore it and move on.

All this is not to say, that kids and youth are not generally competent users of digital media; they very often are (at least to the point of usage, not necessarily involving reflection).

Turning once again to the rest of the quote, I definitely do agree that educationalists must engage and empower kids with control over their own futures.
To agree on this, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily imply agreeing on the aforementioned. I'm daily confronting the need of educators to work with digital media in classrooms, because these (among other things) can be used to do exactly that - engage and empower kids with control over their own futures.

No need to say, that this describes a rather attractive learning situation!

[Hall Davidson]

Ewan, You're missing the point, IMHO. Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants" (Prensky's shorthand, which we are stuck with) don't refer to capabilities, they refer to origins. Natives and Immigrants, by definition, are standing on the same ground. The differentiation is where they came from. If you think there is no difference between a human that, between the ages of 3 months and 6 six years, spent 6 hours a day watching television and one that didn't, then you are ignoring both a growing pile of research and the basic fact of the plastic human brain. They came from different lands,metaphorically, and their journeys taught them to learn differently. That means educators should adapt and teach to their learning strengths--which are different than the learning strengths of a non-media, physical toy-based generation. It is not that they come with innate capabilities to do email, etc. Who ever said that? But for us to ignore new learning strengths and, perhaps, mischaracterize them as disabilities, is to do a disservice to young learners. This is a far cry from cowpies. Perhaps we can continue the discussion at ECOO.

[joe wilson]

Look what the immigrants do to the natives in every history lesson I know

Bet the natives win this time ;-)

[Ewan McIntosh]

Hal, first of all we're never stuck with anything, above all Prensky's terminology. That's the one thing new technology has changed. Little guys like me can challenge terminology and ideas that seem defunct, and enjoy the debate around them, without having to necessarily agree, which is what used to make ideas in academia untouchable.

I like your way of explaining the crucial difference though in where we're standing (same place) and where we came from (different places). However, I'd argue that really, when we look at the technologies making the biggest impacts, no-one over the age of five years old can safely be called a native. Here's why:

iTunes hits mainstream with the Windows Edition: end 2003
iPod 3rd Gen begins to make MP3 players mainstream: Christmas 2003
YouTube: 2005
Social networking gets anywhere close to becoming mainstream: 2006
Social networking hits critical mass in web users: 2007
3G phones become commonplace in Europe: 2006

This is all recent history, which we've ALL had to grow into. Therefore I think we've all come from another place where we didn't speak that language.

I wonder if it's just that younger people and those older people with an above-average interest in music, film, and writing were more likely to have tapped into it earlier, seeing it as another way to feed their passions.

[Jaye Richards]

What a great debate this is. I'm not really sure I can add anything else to it. I guess what it comes down to for me as a classroom teacher is that as ever, I can take snippets of the views expressed and use them to, not so much re-engineer my own philosophical stance underlying my classroom practice, but just fine-tune a little..
Ewan wrote... "I'm daily confronting the need of educators to work with digital media in classrooms, because these (among other things) can be used to do exactly that - engage and empower kids with control over their own futures.

No need to say, that this describes a rather attractive learning situation!"

This is just so right on the money, for me and my students who have grabbed and run with this concept. The Davitt learning ideas generator was a case in point for me - the creativity linked to the Biology curriculum that came out of one lesson with this was just mind-blowing...
..and yet another one I came to through you or Andrew, Ewan !
I might be a digital immigrant, but I'm assimilating fast !!

[Sinclair Mackenzie]

Surely the biggest digital divide has to be the one in staffrooms across the country?

[janien]

Yesyesyes, I hope I'm in too! You bring me in 'heaven of delight', dear Mr. McIntosh ...only superlatives arise when reading your posts! "We'r all in the connected Generation", that sounds so good, so inspiring and stimulating.

Cheers
janien in litblog The Sausage Machine
(61 and grandmother)

[janien]

@ Jaye Richards (12th November)
I do agree! I was and am 'experimenting' with blogging and wikiing in language and literature teaching in secondary school. A 100% positive, fascinating, motivating, inspiring experience for all of us, students and teacher! And we stay connected ... in a 'natural' and easy way, 24-7.

[Joe Nutt]

So good to see that, what elsewhere I have referred to in presentations and print as possibly the most pernicious, debilitating, anti-educational concept the teaching profession has ever had to deal with, is finally getting the treatment it deserves. Has anyone read Prensky’s original article? Readers of Ewan’s blog who haven’t, might gain form the following, which is an extract from a paper I gave at the ICICTE conference three years ago.

Marc Prensky, founder of the Games2train e-learning company, formulated one of the most pervasive and pernicious concepts in this whole field: the concept of digital natives and digital immigrants. Like the shamefully debilitating opposition, thankfully now outmoded: guide on the side, not sage on the stage, Prensky’s phrase reeks of marketing speak. In his article of that name, published in 2001, he states, “Today’s average college grads 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).” He goes on to extol the virtues of any modern technology as employed by child natives and condemns teachers who may have made considered and knowledgeable judgements about the value of the same technologies, as Luddite immigrants, unable to use technology as cleverly as their pupils, and living in some naïve, pre-digital, dark age. It is precisely this entirely culturally-situated viewpoint, that I most wish to challenge as the braggadocio of a self-referential, narcissistic culture.
Prensky expresses no concern over television viewing figures that would appal most European educators. Indeed in a conference at which I saw him speak recently he asserted the truth of an event, precisely because he had seen it on video. He was visibly puzzled by the slightly embarrassed titter of amusement that rippled through an audience for whom video evidence is by its very nature, untrustworthy. Prensky adds to the already unbearable weight of anti-educational cultural pressure exerted on children, by suggesting that not only must teachers change their methodology to accommodate this digital shift but that the content of what they teach must change too.
“It seems to me,” he states, “that after the digital ‘singularity’ there are now two kinds of content: ‘Legacy’ content (to borrow the computer term for old systems) and ‘Future’ content.
“’Legacy’ content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc all of our ‘traditional’ curriculum...’Future’ content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics etc. it also includes ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them.” This ‘Future’ content is extremely interesting to today’s students.”
Perhaps like me, Prensky’s use of the enlightenment native/immigrant opposition leaves you thinking what would truly enlightened men like Voltaire or Jean Jacques Rousseau make of his aims? Are the teenage bedrooms of the United States really full of new-age, noble savages sitting in front of computer monitors? I for one wouldn’t complain for one moment, if I thought they were using the technology to engage purposefully with the minds of men like Rousseau or Voltaire, instead of empathising with one of James Paul Gee’s favourites, Zelda, the Wind Maker.

[Jaye Richards]

...and are you not coming from a particular ideological standpoint as well, Joe ?

Myself, I think Voltaire would have entirely agreed with Prensky. What was it he said about "God not being on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of the best shots..."

[Joe Nutt]

If it's ideological to express serious misgivings about a professional games designer being cited as a model for professional teachers, then yes, I'm being ideological. Here is David Buckingham from his recent book, "Beyond Technology" on Prensky: "Prensky's argument is reinforced by what he regards as definitive evidence about the 'plasticity' of the human brain. Despite the fact that children's brains have not adapted sufficiently over thousands of years to enable all of them to read and write, it appears that, within the space of one generation, technology has brought about fundamental evolutionary changes that are making childen unrecognisable even to their own parents. Children have apparently been 'reprogramming their brains' to accommodate the speed, interactivity and non-linear structures of computer games, and this has resulted in physical differences in the organisation of their brains." What utter guff! I heard David Buckingham speak recently and his recent book, which contains a superbly insightful critique of Prensky and Gee, is a must for anyone seriously interested in the impact of computer games on children's brains.