In Response to CCT

I just read Cool Cat Teacher’s blog on the dumbest generation which starts off with this YouTube video by Don Tapscott.



Like many parents and teachers I do worry about what the amount of “screen time” our children engage in, yet I can’t help but notice a growing awareness of issues spanning across generations. Sure, I don’t see it in every person young and old or maybe it is simply my own growing awareness and concern for more systemic issues and connections. Yet, knowledge changes and shifts so quickly and it seems that perhaps those who are “tapped in” are more adaptable because they are experiencing this movement and shifting tide. They are perhaps more willing to challenge and question information because they can so easily find conflicting, skewed or divergent sources and opinions. They have more access to and control over what information they are “fed”, digesting it in different ways. The digital generation, whoever it encompasses, is beginning to be cognizant of a mass access to creating, mixing, mashing and producing. Knowledge as power has taken on a new meaning.

I think this second video, one created for the AARP U@50 video contest in which it placed second and posted on YouTube by metroamv adds to the discussion.

In her post Vicki Davis (aka Cool Cat Teacher) writes:

To me: ethics, digital citizenship, cultural awareness, global collaborative skills, and discernment are all things that should be part of our student’s upbringing. Then, we will inoculate them against becoming corporate executives who lie on their financial statements to get ahead – people who build bridges with other cultures instead of burning them, and people who treat each other with ethics.

Whether we want it or not, whether we teach it or not, these issues such as ethics, digital citizenship, cultural awareness, global collaborative skills, and discernment are a part of our children’s upbringing. The students themselves are bringing them into the classroom right along with their cell phones, digital cameras, mp3 players and social networking spaces and accounts. More and more teachers are bringing them out of the students’ pockets and into the teaching/learning arena because our students are insisting. That’s how the students engage and any good teacher is engaging too.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Don Tapscott’s introductory video or on the Lost generation video. If you decide to comment in your own blog, please use the technocrati tag netget_stereotypes so that your response can be “aggregated from the blogosphere!”