Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
are more comfortable imparting information related to specific topics, but in the
culture increasingly saturated with NDM, there is a growing need for students to
be able to critique the media they find online and circulate to peers. Students, for
instance, would benefit from being able to determine and discuss the motivation
behind the animation “Al Gore's Penguin Army,” which at first blush appears to
be an individual's humorous critique of the movie
An Inconvenient Truth
but was
actually the product of a corporate “astroturf” PR group.
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Most educators express delight over the wealth of information easily available to
students online but are somewhat unclear how to engage with this type of informal
learning outside of the classroom. While the form and content of what interests
youth—athletes, starlets, the latest rap hit—can feel alien to some educators, infor-
mal learning online can be a valuable key to engaging youth in more pedagogically
appropriate subject matter. For instance, it was recently revealed that a simple web
search for celebrity wallpaper, ringtones, and the like could expose the user to a
number of computer viruses, embedded in celebrity sites by malicious hackers
(Goldsmith, 2009). While celebrities Jessica Biel and Ashley Tinsdale may not
appear to inspire teachable moments at first blush, this story provides an opportu-
nity to get students thinking about who might be interested in what they download
and why.
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Our informants return repeatedly to the decline in downtime for youth. In the past,
youth had more opportunities to goof around, blow off steam, and play without the
pressure of their free time needing to be spent in meaningful, productive pursuits.
NDM have a way of sneaking into the crevices of one's free time. While such
media can eliminate boredom, they also regard boredom as the problem and not a
symptom of what might be a broader issue, such as a lack of alignment between an
individual, his cognitive capacities, and his environmental conditions (Craighead
& Nemeroff, 2004).
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Finally, we heard from educators that NDM can easily trigger ethical conflicts that
students (and perhaps their elders) may not be equipped to handle responsibly. The
temptation to plagiarize material from the web, even if it was written by a friend
or colleague, may be irresistible (Stephenson & Nicholson, 2008). The GoodPlay
project, also based at Harvard's Project Zero, found a host of emergent ethical
issues related to young people and ethical engagement online (Gardner and James
2008).
Our study provides a detailed picture of today's digital youth, as gleaned from
the testimony of experienced teachers in elite institutions. We cannot determine the
extent to which this picture would be obtained with respect to other, less advantaged
youth populations, though many of the themes we encountered have been reported
elsewhere in the journalistic and research literature. Focused interviews of other
adult groups, such as camp counselors to therapists, who have had sustained inter-
actions with youth could also be informative. To determine more “in-depth” changes
in the era of digital youth, ranging from nature of emotional reactions to the capacity
for imaginative leaps, will require both devising of new methods of investigation as
well as strategic triangulation of findings from various types of studies.
