The New Generation

I don't have any students to relate this to but I will do my best to best relate this to my field. First of all, I was born in 1982 and I am considered part of this generation. For me, I don't really consider myself wholly in this generation. I feel personally I am 50/50 with this generation and with that of the Generation X. I remembered using the Apple IIe's in 3rd grade but it wasn't until 7-8th grade until I really fully using technology in school and it wasn't till I was in 11th or 12th grade before technology was integrated in my daily life: i.e. cell phones, instant messaging, blogs, PDA's, etc.

I thought the Howe and Strauss was a bit optimistic with this current generation. I am a realist personally but it is good that they are trying to be optimistic in their approach, but I feel they are not quite getting it correct with their generalizations. I don't think this current generation is much different with working in teams. The one thing that comes to my mind lately was the ad's the army was using a few years back: an army of one. Another thing in their article was that they described this current generation as being doers and not just talkers. I really don't see very much with this generation. With as much as been happening in this country, with the Iraq war, immigration reform, legislation such as wiretapping and No Child Left Behind, what is this generation doing to be heard on issues that affect each of us in this country? For me, I feel this generation is sitting back and just going with the flow rather than questioning and being heard and just focusing on themselves.

I liked the section in Reeves and Oh talking about students entering college not being ready for college. Students these days are feeling that it is require that they go right to college when they are finished with high school, but I don't feel that everyone needs to enter college. When I entered college in 2000, I was surprised to see how many students had undecided majors and were still undecided after two years in college. I also saw many others in preparatory classes the first year of college just getting ready to pursue a degree in college. Also, it is surprising to see how few college graduates actually get a job relating to their degrees. Most of my friends have jobs outside of their degrees but I do feel that college does help people with professional skills.

I really liked the Marc Prensky article. This was really the first time I have read something quite like this. It really got me thinking that we need to really get our school teachers and staff on board with technology and different approaches to reach students. Just look at the commercials dealing with text (txt) messaging (msgs) where a grandmother is using abbreviations bff (best friend forever) Jill or whatever name. Times are changing and we need to work with this change. The one thing that has really bugged me the past few years are the technology standards Michigan has for students and I know that quite a few of our staff wouldn't be proficient in K-8 technology standards. How is it that we expect students to be proficient with technology when our staff isn't? If we don't start bridging the gap, as this book refers to as the digital natives and the digital immigrants, than how will things look in 10 - 15 years out from now? Will we slow students down by not adapting or will students not be as creative due to a language and learning gap?

In the end, I hope Reeves and Oh has it correct. It will be great to see a generation that does rather then talks and a generation we can really look to for advancing society and also learn from the previous generations about being better examples and role models. No matter what way we look at this, Digital Natives are the future generation that is slowly replacing the previous generations in this country and it should be interesting to see what happens in the upcoming years.

Blogs and RSS Reflection

Hello, my name is Nicholas Hay and I am a Technology Support Specialist at Jefferson Schools in Monroe, MI. I don't have any classroom teaching experience or even a teaching degree, but I work with teachers, support staff and students daily. My actual degree is in Computer Science (Programming) with a Mathematics minor. In the technology department, my main responsibilities are to keep the server equipment going, help support the staff with their computers and technology related items, and we also support the phone equipment since that too is running on our network (VoIP {voice over IP}).

The past two weeks have been nuts for me. It seems like every year, the last month before school starts and when school starts, I work 60 to 80 hour weeks to wrap up the various technology projects we have thru summer. I know my wife can't wait for things to calm down because I leave in the morning at 6:15am and I don't get home until 8pm. In our district, there has been more changes this summer than usual and quite a few of the teachers have their feathers ruffled. We have updated computers by moving away from laptops and going to a desktop design in the classrooms, transitioned the servers roles from building servers to each server have an individual role (ie: app server, active directory server, staff server, student server, etc), and the biggest change for the staff was our student and financial management systems. Our ISD just switched this system to Pentamation and it has not been a very smooth transition with any of our staff. We have had many bugs in the system, since this is the companies first web version of this product, and the staff have to learn a new whole interface. The staff and teachers have to keep attendance and use the grade book on this program. Things will get better but until that point, I will have to keep going around and help comfort them with this system because we are going to be using it for years.

Well, if I would take what we have learned this week, I could blogs and RSS feeds in my field to help reach the teachers and staff. I know we (Technology Department) could probably create a blog to post items technology related, such as tips with using software/programs (how to's), or see what people think about a technology idea/decision we are thinking about implementing. I am sure I could set an RSS feed up in Internet Explorer via Group Policy on the server and they would be able to view this and comment/post on their computers. But that would be something more to look into once things calm down and we catch up.