With the progressive arrival of the information society , which has had its most spectacular evolution in the last 15 or 20 years, concepts have been introduced into the vocabulary that allow us to differentiate some generations from others, depending on their relationship with the “new ” technologies. One of these groups are digital natives, those born after 1980 , although some put the cut in 1984. Regardless of that, it seems that taking for granted a generational difference in the use of devices and the internet is a mistake for many researchers.
The younger generation uses technology in the same way as the older ones and is no better at multitasking . Many members of the digital knowledge generation use technology in the same way as many of their elders: they passively absorb information. At least this is what a study published in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education assures, based on a detailed analysis of more than 6000 individual sessions.
The research findings include that there is no evidence that there is a single new generation of young students, and that the complex changes that are taking place in the student body are due to an age-related component that is simply makes it more obvious with the use of new technologies. These include the uses of social networking sites , such as Facebook, the uploading and manipulation of multimedia (eg YouTube), and the use of portable devices to access the mobile internet.
Furthermore, according to the researchers, the gap between students and their teachers is not fixed, nor is the gap that great. In fact, there is little evidence that students enter university with demands for new technologies that professors and universities cannot meet.
Surveys show, for example, that teachers and education experts subscribe to dozens of different and opposing “learning styles.” Under these, children can be classified as activists or theorists, organizers or innovators, non-commissioners or pushers, globalists or analysts, deep or surface learners, and so on. Could the latter example be disrupting the access and provision of technology in the classroom, simply because a new cohort is believed to be more familiar with it?
“It is indisputable that people who have been raised in the last decades have been exposed to a great deal of digital technology , at least in developed countries”, but while Don Quixote pointed against solid walls, increase the existence of digital natives , it seems illusory. He is certainly not a giant ”, in the words of Paul Kirschner, an education researcher at the Dutch Open University in Heerlen, who describes himself in his academic work as a“ windmill fighter ”.
The study also raises another concern. One of the skills digital natives are supposed to do is multitask. But the evidence for this is also scant.
References:
Paul A. Kirschnera. Pedro De Bruyckerec. The myths of the digital native and the multitasker. Teaching and Teacher Education. Volume 67, 2017, Pages 135-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.06.001
