I'm still intruiged by this post on youtube by Renetto. Take a look at the reaction of this kid who calls himself whatshisfacefred 

 

When I was surfing around the YouTube films I found this film in which mr Renetto asks us: Who is watching You Tube ?

 

Just take a look at the first reaction this man got...... what a great man and fantastic example of a memebr of the Net-generation!

 

:) :) :) :)

Today I was (for the thousand time) trying to find empirical evidence about the claims of many scholars on the changing nature of the Net-gen youngsters. Especially I was looking at the arguments made by John Seely Brown in "Growing up digital". Brown (2000) describes a set of 4 dimensions and shifts that describe the Net-gen youngsters have developed through the use of digital media and web technology. Also the work of Tapscott, more recently the Dutch publication "Yearbook of ICT & society 2006" and others. Although me myself as well as a lot of other researchers believe that todays Net-generation is more profoundly changing their ways of accessing and comunicating information, there is hardly any empirical evidence to prove this point. So there I was: digging through the web....

 

From the point of information literacy I came up with the term 'digital literacy' and found some great articles by Yoram Eshet. In this article Eshet provides us with a conceptual framework of digital literacy. He suggests that digital literacy comprises five major digital skills:

 

1. photo-visual skills

2. reproduction skills

3. branching skills

4. information skills

5. socio-emotional skills

 

This immediatley catched my attention because of the great overlap with Brown' arguments' and because in the follow up article, Eshet describes the results of his experiments on different age groups showing digital literacy skills! In this post I'll give a reflection on the findings and also try to perform some 'reproduction skills' by comparing with the arguments of other scholars.

 

Main finding is the results show that digital literacy is not shared equeally among all age groups, but that the notion that the Net generation is more digitally literate than older generations should be handled with care!

 

OK, well what are net-geners good at? The results show us that Net-geners (participants were 17 years old in 2004) are better in photo visual tasks and branching tasks. This supports the assumption that through their extensive use of ICT, net geners go ahead in their ability to read images, rather than texts. Also, they perform better in non-lineair environments which supports Browns argument for the shift from linear to non-linear navigation.

 

And... what are they not so good at? The older generations performed better on the reproduction and information skills. These comprise what Brown calls "bricolage", the abilty to find information and to use it to construct your own knowledge, meanwhile judging the information on quality and reliability.

 

Eshet and his partner Amichai point us to the crucial role of educators to help students develop critical thinking and promoting information literacy, also being a main point in the yearbook of ICT and society.

 

Unfortunately, the researcher weren't able to provide us with clear results on socio-emotional literacy skills. In my point of view this is a missed opportunity. I realized, reading the article, that if there is anything that distinguishes Net-geners from older internet users THIS IS IT!

Prensky calls on the digital imigrant- native methafore. When a non net-geners comes into cuberspace, a net-gener (the native) will immediately recognize him/her. It's like my teacher said to me: I'm also using the internet the whole day, looking information and e-mailing, what is it that makes me different ??? Well, among other things I truly believe it has got to do with her socio-emotional skills in virtual environments. This is about understanding the 'rules of the game'. Willing to share knowledge as well as emotions in digital communication also include in socio-emotional digital literacy skills. A very intersting, but tamely vague concept. I hope to be able to specify it more in the following weeks/ months/ years....

 

You're invited to post your reaction to help to develop these views!