You are Never Alone

An article by Diana Oblinger subtitled what it means to education defines the Net Generation as students who were born after 1982 (that makes them 25+) - students who have never known life without the internet, and have integrated internet access into everything they do.

My elder daughter and her husband moved to Abu Dhabi with his work late last year and I can’t help comparing our contact with them with what happened when I first went overseas for an extended period. At least once a week we talk to them, not usually on the phone, but through web cam or text messaging in Live Messenger. My computer is internet-connected and on most of the time, and so is theirs, apart from a nearly 7 hours time difference. We send an avatar stomping around the screen when we want to talk and nudge each other when we say goodbye. We can be in almost instant contact and catch up almost as often as we did when they were living a bare 2 km away.

By contrast, a little over 30 years ago, I flew out of Darwin on the eve of Cyclone Tracy. Communications were such that my parents were in doubt about my safety until, 6 weeks later, the first snail mail post card arrived from Bali. In the ensuing 12 months that’s how we communicated - post cards and hideously expensive long distance phone calls.

You only have to think of contrasts like this to see examples of how new technologies, particularly those associated with internet development, have radically changed what is possible in our lives.

Oblinger’s article in Becta’s Emerging technologies for learning - volume 3 (2008) is a catalogue of how technology has created a generation that is constantly connected, constantly sharing, transitioning seamlessly between ‘real’ and digital lives, seeing education as a commodity to be consumed and accumulated like friends on Facebook.

We’ve talked for a while now in education about anywhere, anytime learning. Today it can be a reality. And when those services are not available, or bandwidth is too low, or even worse, sites are blocked in our institutions, then our credibility as educators takes a nosedive.

Oblinger talks about our students as harbingers of change, paving the way with new expectations, new ways to use technology, and new norms. When I picked up a GPS navigator for a hire car today, the man behind the counter asked if I had ever used “one of these”. His second question was whether there were any kids in the car. We oldies joke about using the manual only as a last resort. Most of the Net Generation never use one.

Do read the rest of the article, and particularly the questions that Oblinger says we should be asking when we determine our policies and practices. She says that while Net Gens are confident, we often mistake that for maturity and they are not really technologially savvy. They still need our guidance on sensible practice, our help in understanding specific procedures, and they need to have access in our educational institutions.

And then, at the end, look at her list of implications for our learning spaces. We need to re-design them, and our users need to be consulted in what suits them. She says they need to be “socially catalytic”. How do your learning spaces measure up?