Generation Gaps

Welcome to LIBE 477, my final course for the TL Diploma! I am more than a little excited, but loathe to give up my UPass. If it weren’t for worrying about grades and the cost of courses, I would just keep going. Anyway.

In the first two days, several things stood out for me. First, the digital native generation. This is interesting to me not just as a teacher, but as a parent also. My oldest is thirteen and we frequently have conversations, disagreements even, about the purchase, maintenance, and use of technology. She always wants the latest, greatest gadget that can do more, faster, and better.  

At some very early point, my daughter, a digital native (I learned yesterday) having grown up with computers and internet, teaches me. She teaches me how to use my digital camera, how to find a function on my cel phone, how to use wireless with my MacBook, how to defriend or limit access to people on Facebook, how to search for a product, and so on. She tells me that her generation is the throw away generation, the ones that always want the latest and greatest. Happy to toss their old equipment for most recent iPod, cell phone, computer. Scary, isn’t it? All these young teens wandering around with their digital cameras, cell phones that shoot video and surf the net, and iPods.

My parents tried to instill in us the value of well built, crafted items that could last a lifetime, or at least a good twenty years. This includes a stereo, a pair of good shoes, a good coat, a car, a bike, a good suit or dress to wear to funerals and weddings, and even socks if you carefully darn them. 

My generation grew up with Atari, Coleco Vision (why didn’t we keep those?), and a Commodore 64 that we wrote little programs for. My first taste of the internet was a little black modem my brothers had that they used to download simple games. It was all text based. Now I run around with my cell phone, my laptop, my digital camera. I blog for school, for teaching, for sharing photos with family, for selling my kreechers, and for reflecting. I attend the odd blogging or new media conference, but I am not quite there.

I have the lessons of my parents that echo through me. I am somewhere in between, trying to muddle my way through all this stuff, trying to not get left to far behind. Balancing the lure of the latest and greatest with some resistance I feel to rapid change. I hear that resistance in our class discussions. I hear the excitement when people are sharing and learning cool things to do with technology, like when Lisa showed me Photo Booth and Comic Life yesterday.

I confess to feelings of envy every time my husband uses his Crackberry to look something up.

I wonder about my three year old. Have they defined her generation yet? At a Smartboard conference the presenter stated that 60% of the jobs our Kindies will have have not yet been invented. I hope her generation will be somehow linked to sustainability.