EDUCAUSE Review Magazine, Volume 45, Number 5, September/October 2010

Attention, Engagement, and the Next Generation


Howard Rheingold

If we want to discover how we can engage students as well as ourselves in the 21st century, we must move beyond skills and technologies. We must explore also the interconnected social media literacies of attention, participation, cooperation, network awareness, and critical consumption.

Danah Boyd
The future of Web 2.0 is about streams of content. The goal today is to be attentively aligned—”in flow”—with these information streams, to be aware of information as it flows by, grabbing it at the right moment when it is most relevant, valuable, entertaining, or insightful.
Malcolm Brown, with Mark Auslander, Kelly Gredone, David Green, Bruce Hull, and Walt Jacobs
How can faculty use technology and innovative pedagogical methods in their courses to make their students’ learning experiences richer and more meaningful—to capture, retain, and sustain student engagement?
Veronica Diaz, Cindy Jennings, Kelvin Bentley, P. B. Garrett, Barron Koralesky, Christina Royal, and David Starrett
Electronic books, mobile computing, and open content are three mature, robust, and quite approachable technology innovations holding much promise for attracting students’ attention and thereby supporting deeper student engagement with learning.
Diana G. Oblinger
Improving college readiness and completion for the next generation is a grand challenge for society. Although there are many ways to approach this challenge, applying the innovative capabilities of information technology must be one. We have many of the tools, policies, and technologies in hand.

Mind Map of the Digital Age — from fastcompany.com by Richard Watson

A new map showing how the digital era is changing our minds and in particular about how new digital objects and environments are re-wiring our brains. Best viewed by people aged 35+ with full-time jobs and teenage kids.

The cross-generation workforce — from Forbes.com by Andy McLoughlin
How will businesses deal with the technological chasm?

The workforce as we know it is changing. Digital natives, or Millennials, are knocking on the doors of organizations across the globe. This young generation is accustomed to being connected from any location, at any time of day. They’ve never known life without the Internet, they always carry their cellphone, they spend hours chatting via instant messaging tools, and photos are shared with friends and family via Flickr and social networks. When faced with this digital generation, accustomed to flexibility and openness, traditionally rigid CIOs and IT departments worldwide may soon have a problem.

eSchoolNews Special Report: Empowering the iGeneration — from eSchoolNews.com by Ellie Ashford
Technology can help channel students’ drive to make a difference; here’s how.

Thanks to the democratizing power of technology, which lets anyone with an internet connection tap into resources from all over the globe, it’s now easier than ever for students to start their own companies or collaborate with peers to solve the world’s problems.

In fact, technology is empowering students in ways that earlier generations could only dream of. This trend has important implications for schools, which are under enormous pressure to engage students in ways that are relevant to the challenges of the 21st century.

Fortunately, a number of platforms exist to help educators harness students’ entrepreneurial spirit and their desire to make a difference in their world, and channel these in ways that advance the curriculum.

3.8.10 – A culture of “instant gratification” is making today’s schoolchildren harder to teach, a headteachers’ leader said yesterday.

Generation Y children are ‘harder to teach’

A culture of “instant gratification” is making today’s schoolchildren harder to teach, a headteachers’ leader said yesterday.

Youngsters live in a world dominated by reality television and celebrities “where success appears to come instantly and without any real effort”, John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents secondary school heads, told his annual conference in London. “It is difficult for teachers to compete,” he added. “Success in learning just doesn’t come fast enough.”

Dr Dunford cited research showing children spent a daily average of 1.7 hours online, 1.5 hours on computer gaming and 2.7 hours on watching television. “Against this background, the job of the teacher is immensely harder than it was even ten years ago,” he said. “To engage the impatient young people of Generation Y, something more is needed.”

He said children needed to be encouraged to use the skills they had developed to do more independent learning. Young people did not need to learn more but learn better, he said. “We have to move from dependent learning to independent learning.” He cited a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which said “teachers need to be capable of preparing students for a society and an economy in which they will be expected to be self-directed learners, able and motivated to keep learning over a lifetime.”

Original resource from the Committed Sardine blog

Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to change.

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Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ kids multi-task, connect — from USAToday.com by Sharon Jayson

Move over, Millennials. You’re not the younger generation anymore.

For the past decade, you were the ones to watch. But now, as the eldest among you are fast approaching 30, there’s a new group just begging for some attention. They’re still kids, and although there’s a lot the experts don’t yet know about them, one thing they do agree on is that what kids use and expect from their world has changed rapidly.

And it’s all because of technology.

“It’s simply a part of their DNA,” says Dave Verhaagen, a child and adolescent psychologist in Charlotte. “It shapes everything about them.”

The difference is that these younger kids “don’t remember a time without the constant connectivity to the world that these technologies bring,” she says. “They’re growing up with expectations (emphasis DSC) of always being present in a social way — always being available to peers wherever you are.”

“The technology is the easiest way to see it, but it’s also a mind-set, and the mind-set goes with the little ‘i,’ which I’m taking to stand for ‘individualized,’ ” Rosen says. “Everything is customized and individualized to ‘me.’ (emphasis DSC) My music choices are customizable to ‘me.’ What I watch on TV any instant is customizable to ‘me.’ “

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