Informing teachers about the debunked Netgeneration?

Main thought: How to make empirical evidence of young people's interactive media use available to teachers?.

A growing number of studies provides empirical data that 'debunks' the existence of a Netgeneration. Chris Jones (Reader in the Institute of Educational Technology, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK) created an international network of researchers working on this type of research. Jones organized with this network a symposium at the Networked Learning Conference 2010 (proceedings freely available). He als edited a special section in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. And another special section will be published soon in Learning, Media & Technology. I contributed to both the NLC symposium and the LMT special section.
The JCAL special section has been discussed on twitter and blogs. @smartinez on her blog added important comments to the availability of the research papers:

The Journal has some fabulous looking articles – but I can’t read them. Most of you can’t read them either. It’s a closed journal. Sorry, only for academics and researchers. Here’s the problem. The “digital native” myth is being perpetuated in popular culture, books, and keynote speeches, all easily accessible. These rebuttals, well-researched (I assume), peer-reviewed, and not sensationalized, are locked behind closed doors.

So when teachers hear that the curriculum is being modified to meet the needs of “digital natives” – what can they do? When educators present at conferences about this issue, should they cite the abstract to refute the silly (but free) sloganeering? When they talk to friends, neighbors, teachers, or the school board who think that kids “brains are different now” can they pull from a deep knowledge of brand new, relevant research? No – it’s not available

I agree, the papers should be publicly available for free. At the same time, I published my research in closed journals as well. This shows the dilemma for researchers which recently caused discussion on twitter and blogs.

However, I am not convinced that open access solves the problems: I know a lot of teachers who are interested in my results, but who can not find their way to journals, open access or not.

So the main question for me is: How can we bring our results to them, apart from emailing a paper to teachers in our network (which according to journal publishers is illegal...)?

I tried to solve this problem in the last few years by giving presentations at schools and publishing a report, available for free via Dutch institute Kennisnet. But something tells me there should be better ways...

Diversity in interactive media use among youths.

Leraar 24, a Dutch website discussing educational innovations by means of video-reports, published a video about my research on interactive media use among youths.

Considering young people's motives for interactive media use

Educational Research Review published my article on young people's motives for interactive media use. It contains a literature review of empirical evidence against the Net generation assumptions. The review was finished March 2009, just before we submitted the article. However, since that moment a number of studies were published that describe diversity in young people's interactive media use to more detail. These were not included in the review.

The abstract:

Young people's increasing use of interactive media has led to assertions about possible consequences for education. Rather than following assertions, we argue for theory-driven empirical research as a basis for education renewal. First, we review the existing empirical research, concluding that there is almost no theory-driven research available. Subsequently we discuss sensitizing concepts as a perspective for research on the relation between interactive media and youth culture. These concepts, derived from the literature, include insecurity, reflexivity, affinity spaces and shape-shifting portfolio people. With this perspective we examine social and cultural functions of interactive media within contemporary Western youth culture. This examination leads to questions for education and a subsequent plan for future research, with a focus on diversity among students and the development of local cultures. This entails studying both the motives as well as the actual use of interactive media, which should be the concern of educational practices.

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The use of interactive media among today’s youth

The pilot study about young people's interactive media use I did has been published by Computers in Human Behavior. Here's the abstract:

The intensive use of interactive media has led to assertions about the effect of these media on youth. This paper presents a quantitative study on the position of interactive media in young people’s lives. Rather than following the assumption of a homogeneous generation, we investigate the existence of a diversity of user patterns. The research question for this paper: Can patterns be found in the use of interactive media among youth? We answer this question by a survey among Dutch youngsters aged 10–23. Four clusters of interactive media users, namely Traditionalists, Gamers, Networkers and Producers were identified using cluster analysis. Behind these straightforward clusters, a complex whole of user activities can be found. Each cluster shows specific use of and opinions about interactive media. This provides a contextualized understanding of the position of interactive media in the lives of contemporary youth, and a nuanced conceptualization of the ‘Net generation’. This allows for studying the intricate relationship between youth culture, interactive media and learning.

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