<div class="para"><p>The claim that there is a distinctive new generation of students in possession of sophisticated technology skills and with learning preferences for which education is not equipped to support has excited much recent attention. Proponents arguing that education must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have sparked an academic form of a ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked empirical evidence.</p></div><div class="para"><p>The picture beginning to emerge from research on young people's relationships with technology is much more complex than the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people's use and skills are not uniform. There is no evidence of widespread and universal disaffection, or of a distinctly different learning style the like of which has never been seen before. </p></div>

As a result, while N-Gens interact with the world through multimedia, online social networking, and routine multitasking, their professors tend to approach learning linearly, one task at a time, and as an individual activity that is centered largely around printed text (Hartman, Dzubian, and Brophy-Ellison <a target="_blank" href="http://www.webcitation.org/5Xw4B5bKP">2007</a>).

However, these digital texts do not necessarily lack style, coherence, or organization; they simply present meaning in ways unfamiliar to the instructor. For example, a collection of images on Flickr with authorial comments and tags certainly does not resemble the traditional essay, but the time spent on such a project, the motivation for undertaking it, and its ability to communicate meaning can certainly be equal to the investment and motivation required by the traditional essay—and the photos may actually provide more meaningful communication for their intended audience.

Texts that do not look like books or essays and that are structured in unfamiliar ways may leave educators with the perception that the authors of these texts lack necessary literacy skills. Are these students missing something, or are they coming to us with skills as researchers, readers, writers, and critical thinkers that have been developed in a context that faculty members may not understand and appreciate? The striking differences between the linear, print-based texts of instructors and the interactive, fluctuating, hyperlinked texts of the N-Gen student may keep instructors from fully appreciating the thought processes behind these texts. Learning how to teach the wired student requires a two-pronged effort: to understand how N-Gen student understand and process texts and to create a pedagogy that leverages the learning skills of this type of learner.

<p>First, it helps to look at the typical process of technology adoption (keeping in mind, of course, that schools are not typical of anything.) It's typically a four-step process:</p> <ol> <li> Dabbling.</li> <li> Doing old things in old ways.</li> <li> Doing old things in new ways.</li> <li> Doing new things in new ways.</li></ol>

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

The analogy I came up with a few days ago was that of eating. People eat very differently in times of abundance than scarcity. Their biology doesn’t significantly change (though it does some), but it would be foolish to look around and argue that people aren’t really eating differently, it’s just a change in their food context. It would be wiser to recognize that the socioeconomic context is an important factor to consider when it comes to nutrition and try to teach proper eating habits in an environment that is not just no longer one of hunting and gathering, but one that is very different for most of us from even 50 years ago.

I think, in this instance, the consideration of varied design approaches has been tied to the wrong variable (generational differences). The greater area of change and impact is found in the habits, activities, and needs of learners (not based on generations, but on how technology creates new opportunities for learning networks far beyond the narrow domain of classroom walls).

I'd like to see an instructional design process that attends to the complexity of emergent or unknown processes.

But our institutions need to change because of the increasing complexity of society and globalization. Schools and universities play a dual role: accommodating learner’s method and mode of learning <i>and</i> transforming learners and preparing them to function in the world that is unfolding. This distinction may seem slight, but it's important. <br> Why should schools react to learner's methods of learning and interacting with content? Well, obviously, if we ignore how they interact with each other and with content, we are largely subjecting them to a mode of thinking (linear, certainty-based) that is at odds with how they experience life (complex, social, and collaborative). Contrary to Prensksy's views, this distinction is NOT a function of age. It's a function of attitude...a mindset of experimentation...experience with technology.

The research suggests that kids who live online understand the process by which knowledge is produced and shared in an online environment, whereas those kids who come in within 10 minutes, they're trying to get the answer and get off. So they're not as critical of a corporate Web site, for example. That's just one example of some fundamental inequalities in access to social skills and culture competencies between the information-haves and have-nots.

Really this becomes the basis for the new hidden curriculum. We now must say those kids who are raised in an environment where they have regular access to the online worldï¿??have a different way of learning that prepares them for school--to do better in school and in life--than those kids who were being left out.

But the point is that these writers and researchers totally ignore or overlook people like me who were the earliest users and adapters, and are ourselves ‘natives’. Or more properly, we’re <em>pioneers</em>, since we’re the ones who built, tested, and worked the bugs out of many of these things. We were the people in the university computer labs, or in the military communications shops, who put this technology to real-world use, and, when we could, started bragging about it to our outside friends.

"People think that kids today somehow grow up magically knowing how to use new technologies," he adds. "They don't. The difference with this generation is that if students don't know how to use a technology, they aren't afraid of learning."

the book ushered in a whole new way of thinking - scientific thinking<br><br>How quickly did those changes happen?