Previously, I’ve posted about Digital Natives, (here and here) mostly in terms of how unschooling is pretty much the most ideal way to approach the sticky problem of trying to be an authority to someone who can look up your sources faster than you can.
It did not occur to me, until I was sitting in a room with about 40 other corporate web content delivery professionals (a set of Kiss-of-Death adjectives if ever there were), at a recent gathering for sharing of information about using multimedia on websites, how thoroughly our assumptions are informed by the schooling we got. The point was to familiarize people with the technologies available, and give them some ideas for how to use them.
So how come, I’m sitting there wondering, less than 1/4 of the presentations actually used multimedia? See, corporate folks? Their attention is on keeping their jobs, and looking good for their management. Sort of like how kids in school want to impress the teacher. More and more, I’m convinced that they don’t actually participate in the web beyond what’s required in their daily work, the same way that schooled kids tend to do what’s required for the grade, and not much more, and certainly not much different.
For example, one presentation stressed strongly how important it is to have good solid metadata in things like videos, because there’s no text for a search engine to provide more context and/or relevancy through, so the tagging you give is pretty much all you get. People all over the room are nodding and smiling, like this is news.
Um, hello? Old news, folks. My son Rowan, who is five, understands metatagging. He knows how to start the laptop, launch a browser window, get to YouTube, and search for Tom & Jerry cartoons… in English. He also gets really upset when his searches return videos in other languages (although sometimes he thinks the Japanese ones are pretty funny…). He gets that lack of appropriate tagging is a usability problem, because that’s what it is for him. Of course, he doesn’t have the language to fully express all that the same way we do. But the fact is that as a consumer of multimedia content, his behavior and his reactions are utterly predictable, and at age five, he is already forming opinions about the technological acuity of the people who post such content.
You can remind people to tag their content, but if they are not consumers of such content, they won’t really understand, as Rowan does, how insanely frustrating it is when it all goes pearshaped.
So then, later in the day, people are talking about using new media (whatever that is) to attract “the new developer”… you know, the youth who are driving things now. And I’m nodding, cause I totally agree. And then they start talking, heaven help me, about the Universities and speaking to college students! And in my head, I can see Rowan, already cruising the web, already conversant with how to click past annoying Flash intro pages, already becoming a savvy consumer of online technology. Considering the ugly brushes we’ve already had with minor forms of academia, (here and here), the very idea of my child going to college is ridiculous, and waiting to graduate from the Ivory Towers Of Ossified Thinking to become successful is laughable in the economy of today.
Rowan knows who Duke is, he knows what Flash animation is, and he knows to look for the blessed “skip this intro” buttons. He knows what HTML is, and I’m teaching him coding, a little bit at a time. I think about him encountering his first “Hello, World” and I cringe just a little bit. Just like it’s absurd for a roomful of adults who don’t even use multimedia to stand around talking about presenting it to people who are native users of it, it’s absurd to think that someday some professor will be more competent to teach my child about the Cloud than he, who’s been breathing it for years, is.
I‘d like to really recommend that my colleagues and compatriots leave work early, go home… and watch their kids interact with the digital environment. They will learn far more from that exercise about the context of the Digital Native, and about the reality of content propagation for that audience, than they will by listening to a roomful of Digital Immigrants blather on about a sky they’ve never even really seen.
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It is truly amazing (and appalling?) how completely deaf, dumb, and blind that both corporate businesses and academia are to the needs, attitudes, and behavior of this new generation.
I even see it in other parents who completely refuse to acknowledge that the rules of the world have changed–and just how far they have changed–because of the rise of the digital native.
There are such opportunities here . . . if only people were open-minded enough to see them. It is a brave new world–but one with incredible potential.
I’m reminded of that one scene in a “Serenity” episode where one of the characters suggests that an idea is science fiction is told, “You live on a starship. Duh.” In many ways, we are already living in the future if people open their eyes to see it.
Hmmm . . . sounds like an entry for *my* blog . . .
and a child shall lead them. When we first got our computer, I didn’t touch it for 3 months. I watched Ria and Marc play on it first and learned from them. Ria’s natural Father was a programmer, and at 2 she was already playing games on computer, I will say it was just 3 button game. Like your new page.
I sent this to my husband, and he says that he’s already seeing this at the big company he works for. Many college kids are passing up working with his company because they are so “old school”.
But what forever baffles me are the parents who insist that the web is dangerous. “My children are not ready for the Internet! They will run into bad things. There are predators and pedophiles lurking everywhere who will hurt my baby. He might see a P*N*S!”
Sacre bleu! Because the kid doesn’t have one already? Um? What? Huh?
My daughter ran into a bunch of those big things when searching recently for “bull horns.” I didn’t see her blush. I didn’t see her collapse into a quivering fearful heap. Instead, I heard a delighted snicker as she informed me that we needed to improve our search terms if we were going to get any reasonable information to help us identify the origins of the horns her uncle had shipped out from Texas.
“My children are too young for the Internet” is a phrase that frightens me deeply.
And then there are those that assume their own experiences are universal.
Most of my friends kids are not at the level with computers as you describe here — some by choice and others not (some don’t even have computers at home and that’s not all bad). My ten year old could not do what your five year old does on the computer and I am not upset by that. She will find her way with what is useful for her and I would much rather have her concentrate on non-screen based experiences when appropriate. My almost three year old has only been allowed to “push mommy’s buttons” a few times.
My husband and I both work in software. We are working for companies that produce software for businesses so really a VERY different focus as the average users are anything but digital natives. However we are not afraid of technology ourselves.
We really do think our 2 year old is too young for the Internet and it has nothing to do with predetors.
It is of course laughable not to be in touch with the intended audience. At the same time it makes me sad to think the norm will ever become 5 year old programmers (or 10 year old) …
and that’s enough for my Saturday morning ‘just catching up with my reading’ brain this morning …
FWIW, I’ve just redone that post and fine-tuned some stuff that was
bugging me. I must have been working on it as you were reading it. =)
On Feb 16, 2008 7:23 AM, Tami wrote:
> And then there are those that assume their own experiences are universal.
I work with developers, and developer communications, and
increasingly, you have to talk to eight year olds if you’re going to
get anywhere in the realm of technology adoption. “Six to Sixteen!” is
the battle cry where I work, these days.
And yeah, it’s my blog, so it’s my experience. =) This one was largely
written out of frustration. Most of the people in that room had no
freaking idea what they were talking about.
> Most of my friends kids are not at the level with computers as you describe here — some by choice and others not (some don’t even have computers at home and that’s not all bad). My ten year old could not do what your five year old does on the computer and I am not upset by that. She will find her way with what is useful for her and I would much rather have her concentrate on non-screen based experiences when appropriate. My almost three year old has only been allowed to “push mommy’s buttons” a few times.
Choices in how to integrate tech are individual, sure, but assuming
that adults know tech and kids don’t is fatal.
> My husband and I both work in software. We are working for companies that produce software for businesses so really a VERY different focus as the average users are anything but digital natives. However we are not afraid of technology ourselves.
Yeah, end-user stuff and developer stuff are totally different planets
> We really do think our 2 year old is too young for the Internet and it has nothing to do with predetors.
Yea, but the difference between 2 and 5 is pretty huge.
> It is of course laughable not to be in touch with the intended audience. At the same time it makes me sad to think the norm will ever become 5 year old programmers (or 10 year old) …
That’s where it’s going. The signs are clear as day.
> and that’s enough for my Saturday morning ‘just catching up with my reading’ brain this morning …
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for readin!
On the 2 year old being on internet. when I said my daughter was playing games at 2 there was no internet. that was 20 years ago, and it was a BIG Bird learning game. The computer is an awesome learning tool, and the sooner a child can learn to use it the better. Wish they had it when my boys where small. And you don’t have to go on line to learn. I know a few parents who have computers for their children but aren’t on line. But they do have learning software. But don’t forget the basic 3 R’s
HEY!!! A) I loved this post and B) when did you get a blog facelift? it looks great. again, chagrined I had nothing to do with it, but I really like the color scheme and image at the top. meditative, serene, clean.
Back to A) – mind if I forward this around to some usability experts & web content developers at my company?
XOXOXO PPL, Laura