Howard Rheingold's Library tagged digital_natives →  View Popular

"In the opening keynote, “Networked Learners,” Lee Rainie discusses the latest findings of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project about how teenagers and young adults have embraced technology of all kinds — including broadband, cell phones, gaming devices and MP3 players. He describes how technology has affected the way “digital natives” search for, gather and act on information."

www.pewinternet.org/...52-Networked-Learners.aspx - Preview

networks learning digital_natives search

"The media landscape has changed dramatically in recent decades, from one predominated by traditional mass communication formats to today's more personalized network environment. Mobile communication plays a central role in this transition, with adoption rates that surpass even those of the Internet. This essay argues that the widespread diffusion and use of mobile telephony is iconic of a shift toward a new 'personal communication society', evidenced by several key areas of social change, including symbolic meaning of the technology, new forms of coordination and social networking, personalization of public spaces, and the mobile youth culture. The conclusion speculates on future trends in the sociotechnological climate."

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networks social_networks mobile_devices digital_natives media

"A culture of young people leading 'hybrid lives' has been uncovered after nearly half say they feel happiest when online, according to a report.

The survey has identified a new generation of so-called 'digital natives' who are at ease with a range of modern communications technologies.

It will raise further concerns that young people are increasingly using computers and other similar electrical devices and shunning real contact with their peers."

www.dailymail.co.uk/...half-feel-happiest-online.html - Preview

digital_natives

"But if you ask the experts, they are pretty unanimous that we don’t know much.

“The literature looking at media and its impact on attentional skills is just in its infancy,” said Renee Hobbs, a professor of mass media and communications at Temple University and a specialist in media literacy.

Another expert, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington who is a leading researcher on children and the media, agreed. “The pace of science has not kept up with technology,” he told me.

And Dr. Victor C. Strasburger, a professor at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, said, “Kids are spending an extraordinary amount of time with media,” but added: “We don’t really know what they pay attention to, what they don’t. We don’t know how it impacts their school performance, whether it impacts their school performance.”

A recent and much-discussed study showed decreased productivity in adults who were multitasking — or as Dr. Christakis put it, “The truth is you don’t really multitask, you just think you do; the brain can’t process two high-level cognitive things.” What you are actually doing, he went on, is “oscillating between the two.”

So are teenagers any better at oscillating?

“It may be that multitasking is more of a problem for us old brains,” Professor Hobbs said. "

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multitasking digital_natives

. "Generational images are stereotypes," says Mr. Levine, now president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. "There are some differences that stand out, but there are more similarities between students of the past and the present. But if you wrote a book saying that, how interesting would that book be?"

Generations established its creators as pioneers in a burgeoning field. They soon became media darlings, best-selling authors, and busy speakers. Generations would popularize the idea that people in a particular age group share distinct personae and values by virtue of occupying the same "place" in time as they grow up. In turn, this would affirm the notion that Millennials were a riddle waiting to be solved.

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digital_natives

video: danah boyd discussed her research on teenagers and their patterns of using social media at the 2009 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology.

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digital_natives social_media

Lately there’s been quite a bit of discussion about whether or not Twitter is being widely adopted by younger users. Several months back we posted on our blog about the surprising older skew among visitors to Twitter.com, which perhaps originally set the stage for this debate.

Last week, Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times also weighed in on the subject in her article, “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens.” While I found the article to be an interesting read that explores the very real reasons behind some teens’ apparent aversion to Twitter, I thought it only captured half the story. What it accurately depicted is the notion that teens were indeed slow to jump on board and that Twitter definitely defied the early adopter model in attracting primarily users age 35 and older in the beginning.

But as the Twitter audience has mushroomed in recent months – to 21 million U.S. visitors in July 2009 (note: this number represents visitors to the Twitter.com website and does not include API or mobile Twitter usage) – the younger age groups are the ones flooding in the fastest.

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twitter digital_natives

Political and civic involvement have long been dominated by those with high levels of income and education, leading some advocates to hope that internet-based engagement might alter this pattern. However, a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows that the internet is not changing the fundamental socio-economic character of civic engagement in America. When it comes to online activities such as contributing money, contacting a government official or signing an online petition, the wealthy and well-educated continue to lead the way.

Still, there are hints that the new forms of civic engagement anchored in blogs and social networking sites could alter long-standing patterns. Some 19% of internet users have posted material online about political or social issues or used a social networking site for some form of civic or political engagement. And this group of activists is disproportionately young.

www.pewinternet.org/...rnet-and-Civic-Engagement.aspx - Preview

civic_engagement public_sphere digital_natives

Maybe Google isn't making us stoopid, after all. Students taking online courses beat those with face-to-face instruction, according to a new study for the Department of Education. The report, by SRI International, reviewed studies from 1996 to 2008 involving K-12 schools in addition to colleges and adult education programs. It concluded that students following online courses ranked in the 59th percentile in tests compared with the average classroom students scoring in the 50th percentile. Great news! What do we do with it?

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educational_technology digital_natives

The theory of Radical Change, which is based on the digital age principles of interactivity, connectivity, and access, is suggested as a lens to reexamine existing research on youth information-seeking behavior in the digital environment. After a brief review of research meta-analyses, which often point to deficits in youth information-seeking behavior, questions that emerge from this research are suggested. Meta-analyses of gender and information behavior studies find that some recent research disputes former conclusions. Radical Change is applied to an examination of specific facets of contemporary research in order to demonstrate how new perspectives can be gained. This analysis addresses commonalities between information-seeking behavior related to the handheld book with hypertextual qualities and digital materials, the social nature of information seeking, and emerging issues of access. It is noted that the public library as a setting for research has rarely been used, even though its less structured nature might provide insights that do not surface in schools. A look at directions for youth information-seeking behavior research in the future proposes how brain research might shed further light on behavioral observations. Conclusions note existing research and summarize some new points of view and areas for investigation.

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search literacy digital_natives

The online-safety messages most Americans are getting are still pretty much one-size-fits-all and focused largely on adult-to-child crime, rather than on what the growing bodies of both Net-safety and social-media research have found. Online safety 2.0 began to develop messaging around the peer-to-peer part of online safety, mostly harassment and cyberbullying and, increasingly, sexting by cellphones, but it still focuses on technology not behavior as the primary risk and characterizes youth almost without exception as potential victims. Version 2.0 fails to recognize youth agency: young people as participants, stakeholders, and leaders in an increasingly participatory environment online and offline. Though its aim is certainly positive, its message, like that of Version 1.0, is largely negative, lacks context, and is largely irrelevant to youth.

To be relevant to young people, its intended beneficiaries, Net safety needs to respect youth agency, embrace the technologies they love, use social media in the instruction process, and address the positive reasons for safe use of social technology. It’s not safety from bad outcomes but safety for positive ones.

Think about playgrounds. Certainly they have to be safe, but do we want our children to play in places that are only safe? As educator Barry Joseph asked recently in the Global Kids blog, don’t we want them to be really fun and compelling, to stimulate and enrich our kids’ physical and social development? Safety is essential but only part of what we want for the people who are going to run this world!

Online Safety 3.0 enables youth enrichment and empowerment. Its main components – new media literacy and digital citizenship – are both protective and enabling.

www.connectsafely.org/...ring-and-protecting-youth.html - Preview

literacy digital_natives

eenagers have previously lagged behind adults in their ownership of cell phones, but several years of survey data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that those ages 12-17 are closing the gap in cell phone ownership. The Pew Internet Project first began surveying teenagers about their mobile phones in its 2004 Teens and Parents project, when a survey showed that 45% of teens had a cell phone. Since that time, mobile phone use has climbed steadily among teens ages 12 to 17 -- to 63% in fall of 2006 and to 71% in early 2008.

In comparison, 77% of all adults (and 88% of parents) had a cell phone or other mobile device at a similar point in 2008. Cell phone ownership among adults has since risen to 85%, based on the results of our most recent tracking survey of adults conducted in April 2009. (The Pew Internet Project is currently conducting a survey of teens and their parents and will be releasing the new figures in early 2010.)

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mobile_devices digital_natives

Yesterday, Mashable reported Nielsen's latest Twitter numbers with the headline Stats Confirm It: Teens Don't Tweet. This gained traction on Twitter turning into the trending topic "teens don't tweet" which was primarily kept in play all day yesterday with teens responding to the TT by saying "I'm a teen" or the equivalent of "you're all idiots... what am I, mashed potatoes?"

I want to unpack some of what played out because I'm astonished by the misinterpretations in every which direction.

We have a methodology and interpretation problem. As Fred Stutzman has pointed out, there are reasons to question Nielsen's methodology and, thus, their findings. Furthermore, the way that they present the data is misleading. If we were to assume an even distribution of Twitter use over the entire U.S. population, it would be completely normal to expect that 16% of Twitter users are young adults. So, really, what Nielsen is saying is, "Everyone expects social media to be used primarily by the young but OMG OMG OMG old farts are just as likely to be using Twitter as young folks! Like OMG."

We have a presentation problem. Mashable presented this report completely inaccurately. First off, Nielsen is measuring 2-24. My guess is that there are a lot more 24-year-olds on Twitter than 2-year-olds. Unless Sockington counts. (And she's probably older than 2 anyhow.) Regardless, the Nielsen data tells us nothing about teens. We don't know if young adults (20-24) are all of those numbers or not. If all 16% of those under 24 on Twitter were teens, teens would be WAY over-represented in proportion to their demographic size.

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twitter digital_natives

When it comes to basic computer applications, even members of the millennial generation may not know as much as they think they do.

A study by North Carolina Central University found that most students overestimated their skill levels when they were asked how they perceived their ability to complete certain tasks and then tested on those tasks.

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digital_natives literacy

Need some digital skills? Check out our library of interactive videos to help you master blogging, digital storytelling, and other multimedia skills.

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literacy digital_natives

Like many, I have been inspired and excited by the spectacular case studies. Yet when I interview children, or in my survey, I was far more struck by how many use the internet in a far more mundane manner, underusing its potential hugely, and often unexcited by what it could do. It was this that led me to urge that we see children's literacy in the context of technological affordances and legibilities. But it also shows to me the value of combining and contrasting insights from qualitative and quantitative work. The spectacular cases, of course, point out what could be the future for many children. The mundane realities, however, force the question - whose fault is it that many children don't use the internet in ways that we, or they, consider very exciting or demanding? It also forces the question, what can be done, something I attend to throughout the book, as I'm keen that we don't fall back into a disappointment that blames children themselves.

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digital_natives literacy

Since then, the idea of the ‘digital native’ has gained a lot of traction and, like many memes, has evolved into a set of assumptions about what makes one person a digital native and another person a digital immigrant. I have heard the term used in all sorts of contexts, from business to media, and often it’s used in a discussions about how “We must hire more digital natives”, (where “we” is the company or organisation that the speaker represents), “Digital natives will change everything”, or “Digital natives will expect us to use social software”.

But what is a digital native? How can we tell one when we see one? For many, the assumptions about what makes a person a digital native revolve around age: The “net generation” are all digital natives because they have grown up with technology embedded so firmly in their lives that they barely recognise it as tech.

This assumption, that a given generation is automatically imbued with a natural understanding of technology in general and the web in particular, is wrong. I have spoken to many an undergraduate class, as has Kevin, made up primarily of people who did not have an interest in the web at all, who distrust it, feel it has no place in their work (and sometimes personal) lives. There is a tendency amongst each generation to believe that the generations that come afterwards are in some way fundamentally different, and it seems to be a natural part of being human to dissociate oneself from younger generations. Maybe that is why we name each generation, from Baby Boomers to Gen X to the Net Generation, so that we can talk about them as if they are ‘other’ to us. Is not ‘digital natives’ just another way to achieve that?

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digital_natives

Soon after the launch of GMM, I worked with two dozen teens—one group in Chicago and one group in Barbados for a summer youth media workshop run by Open Youth Networks. OurMap of Migrations, as we named it, captivated the intellectual and creative imaginations of the youth participants who eagerly added their own photos, videos, bios, travels and research to the map, becoming equally engrossed in exploring its rich content and learning about one another.

In populating the map with a data array of migration histories, including historical information on the transatlantic slave trade routes as well as personal stories of family diasporas, 95% of participants ended up reporting in the workshop exit survey that the map “significantly altered their views on immigration and forced migration.”

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mapping digital_natives digitalstorytelling

This week, Sonia Livingstone's latest book, Children and the Internet: Great Expectations and Challenging Realities, is being released by Polity. As with the earlier study, it combines quantitative and qualitative perspectives to give us a compelling picture of how the internet is impacting childhood and family life in the United Kingdom. It will be of immediate relevence for all of us doing work on new media literacies and digital learning and beyond, for all of you who are trying to make sense of the challenges and contradictions of parenting in the digital age. As always, what I admire most about Livingstone is her deft balance: she does find a way to speak to both half-full and half-empty types and help them to more fully appreciate the other's perspective.

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digital_natives literacy privacy

But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop.

“Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be,” she said. “Texting hits directly at both those jobs.”

Psychologists expect to see teenagers break free from their parents as they grow into autonomous adults, Professor Turkle went on, “but if technology makes something like staying in touch very, very easy, that’s harder to do; now you have adolescents who are texting their mothers 15 times a day, asking things like, ‘Should I get the red shoes or the blue shoes?’ ”

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texting attention digital_natives