Digital natives

One of the first research tasks in my position of looking after students who do internships in museums and galleries was to write up about online learning. A paper that has been much quoted and just as often refuted threw up the term ‘digital natives’. These are the generation that have grown up with computers and web-based technologies. The ‘digital migrants’ are the older generation that still have one foot in the old country and the other in the new. For example they print off everything to read and write – rather than just leaving it on the screen. I no longer agree and research shows that the older generation are leaping along with Web 2.0 tools. Research has shown that the older generation are more than willing if given the chance to pace things at their leisure. The uptake of new technologies in tertiary education is not necessarily just young graduates but what they term early career academics. It was noted in a recent class in our new learning management system that it was not full of young people but staff that were willing to have a go and flexible thinkers.

One of my projects has been to make a series of podcasts for students who are new to our city, Canberra, Australia. It was a tour of our cultural institutions, that many will end up either doing an internship at or be used as case studies in coursework. I have been teaching students how to make podcasts. I got a few hints how to do it from colleagues, but basically taught myself from websites. Making podcasts on a mac computer is easy through the program Garageband. I would roll around laughing at my podcasts about my mosaics as I was engrossed by making them at the time. So for a supposed ‘digital migrant’ I think I did well.

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