altc-netgen

Contrary to the image of Generation Y as the "Net Generation," internet users in their 20s do not dominate every aspect of online life. Generation X is the most likely group to bank, shop, and look for health information online. Boomers are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online. And even Silent Generation internet users are competitive when it comes to email (although teens might point out that this is proof that email is for old people).

Questioning the net generation: A collaborative project in Australian higher education

The net generation are not big users of Web 2.0 technologies: Preliminary findings

As we move further into the 21st century, the digital native/digital immigrant paradigm created by Marc Prensky in 2001 is becoming less relevant. In this article, Prensky suggests that we should focus instead on the development of what he calls "digital wisdom." Arguing that digital technology can make us not just smarter but truly wiser, Prensky describes how tools that give us access to more information and enhance our analytical powers will both reshape what wisdom is and give us the power to be wiser. These tools, whether they come in the form of complex simulations or databases or even from implanted tools that help us process information as it arrives, enhance our thinking power. The digitally enhanced person who will emerge from these developments, homo sapiens digital, differs from today's human in two key aspects: He or she accepts digital enhancement as an integral fact of human existence, and he or she is digitally wise. Digital wisdom is exhibited both in a considered use of digital enhancements to complement innate abilities and in the use of enhancements to facilitate wiser decision making. In an unimaginably complex future, Prensky argues, the unenhanced person, however wise, will not have the tools of wisdom that will be available to even the least wise enhanced human.

Links to a series of articles/blogs on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education

Don Tapscott is citing recent research in his blog about the education of the net generation, at the website for his latest book. I'd be interested in others' reactions.

Steve Hargadon identifies a number of key trends in the use of Web 2.0 in education, including... Trend #1: A New Publishing Revolution. Trend #2: A Tidal Wave of Information. Trend #3: Everything Is Becoming Participative. Trend #8: Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage.