Ed Jenkins and some perspective...

Catching up on some reading after a three-day trip I ran into a tweet (a post on Twitter for all you non-twittering folk) from Dan French pointing to the video below. The fellow speaking in the vid is Ed Jenkins, a professor of social media at USC.

Good vid!

After prowling around a bit I found that the speech is an excerpt called "The Tech Fix" from a relatively new PBS FrontLine series called: Digital Nation: Life on the virtual frontier. Digital Nation is followup to a series we've viewed in the Lab here and discussed over the last two years called Growing Up Online. The two series appear to be hashed together on this new site.

I didn't see a place where you could view this new program in it's entirety... which I sort of like. Great material for our recent discussions in the Lab lately on our discussions on the differences between generations, how it applies to learning and technology. Here's an ditty on what we've been discussing:

Generations: Summary from Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital

Baby Boom:

January 1946 - December 1964: 19 years, producing 77.2 million children, 23% of the US population

Generation X:

January 1965 to December 1976: 12 years, producing 44.9 million children, 15% of the US population. Also called the "Baby Bust."

The Net Generation:

January 1977 to December 1997: 21 years, producing 81.1 million children, 27% of the US population. Also called "Millenials," and "Generation Y."

Generation Next:

January 1998 to present: 10 years, producing 40.1 million children, 13.4% of the US population. Also called "Generation Z.

Some introductory statements that have spurred on discussion:

• "Gen Next" is using technology differently: Cell phone: it's a music player, alarm clock, camera and obtw, it's a phone too.
• Broadcast: Up to about 1997. TV as thee source of news, weather, sports. Listen to what was being told to you. Very little participation by letters to the editor, etc.
• Collaborative Era: 1997-present. Participatory era. Multiple sources for news. Multiple ways to collaborate. Most in the collaborative era don't have a "land line" phone (traditional house phone).
• Writing less, less effective... or differently? Dramatic increase in writing from the broadcast to collaborative era. Online writing via blogs, wikis, facebook, texting.
• The average "boomer" watched roughly 22.4 hours of tv per week.
• TV now as background noise?
• Customization and conversation instead of a lecture.

I skimmed through the Digital Nation site to see if Jenkins had other contributions and I clipped out links (11) that I could find and pasted them below. I'll use these clips as discussion points... probably tomorrow and over the next few days.

Future shock and information overload:

Skill of the Future:

Human 2.0

Socializing:

Is it an addiction:

Mom vs the Computer:

The Human behind the avatar:

Your kids on social media:

The tech fix: This is the one that made it to YouTube that you saw above.

Defenders of the book:

Educational games already at play:

After, well, many years at this... and the journey from music student to consultant (all the way through), lab aide, network administrator, tech coordinator, on through classroom teacher - I still land on the same themes:

• Denial of service is no way to educate people.

• It may not be about "right" and "wrong."

• It's called a "personal computer" not an "institutionalized computer" so lets treat it as such.

• We're close to a tipping point... and always will be so let's keep moving forward.

• What we teach now should be relevant and thought provoking for today... and especially for the future.

• Let's get a computer in every student hands to address the issues of opportunity, equity.

Time to cook dinner! That's a theme I land on frequently too ; P