Understanding the digital generation

IAN JUKES

APRIL 17, 2012

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<Understanding the digital generation>

He had sense of humor and audience paid entire attention to his words. Probably it comes from his long experience of teaching. He used presentation screen which has lots of helpful graphic, images, moving icons, colors. He knew how to make the audiences follow him though he had to talk fast. He found numbers, data, statistics that helped people to easily realize many things. The word that stuck in my head is ‘digital bombardment’. He used this phrase very often and really tried to make us understand the situation. Children today are exposed to digital bombardment. They are living everyday with digital device and addicted to it. According to his found data, children spend 80 hours on digital device per week whereas they spend 25hours at school. They stay online for 31 hours on average. These shocking numbers made me really feel how they are fundamentally different from older generation. When he asked us to do crossing arms and hands and do it again in opposite ways, I couldn’t do it right away. This was the way I’m born and habituated for a long time. He mentioned about paradigm, the perspective I see things, is so powerful that it can prevent s my ways in education. I truly understand new generations are different from older generations even though I don’t think I’m too old. Even the way of seeing things are different; such as their reading style F, mimicking the way of looking at text layouts such on website when we read Z-way. There are so many things we are different and it is important for us to understand the difference and respect their ways too as educators. We should never avoid the technology and digital generation style but it doesn’t mean that it brings only pros. They are multitasking, but they often lack ability focusing on a single task for extended period time. Things are changing quickly and as an educator, we have to find a good balance in education for our digital degeneration. We have to really understand the difference and make appropriate approach such as incorporating digital devices or more visual elements in classroom.