Thanks to Gen Y Project contributor, Tara Kachaturoff for this heads up on a great podcast.  A few minutes in, he talks specifically about Gen Y’s distaste for traditional advertising and marketing.  If you’re using these techniques to reach Gen Y, stop NOW!  Listen to upcoming Gen Y Forum Calls to hear how this generation decides on what to buy.

Take a listen here

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BBC’s Digital Planet show (on NPR) spends time this week on how young people handle technology - specifically the authors of the Demos ‘Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation’ report I mentioned last week on this blog.

Take a listen here to the podcast.

Dowload and listen here.

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A report out of the UK think tank Demos outlines a number of interesting facts and myths about kids, technology, and how education in the UK must change to keep up with the networks of knowledge that Gen Next is engaged in. 

The report - entitled “Their Space: Education for a digital generation” is from the point of view of the kids who use the technology…buoyed by information from parents, researchers or educators who often misunderstand it.

Some key points:

• Young people use technology to strengthen their existing friendship networks rather than widen them.
• Creative production is nearly universal - uploading photos to building websites is second nature.
• Contrary to society’s assumptions about safety, this generation is capable of self-regulation (on social networking sites) when kept well informed about levels of risk.
• These young learners have a personalized hierarchy of digital activities - consciously choosing activities that are more worthwhile or meaningful to their learning than others.
• There are four technology user types:
• Digital Pioneers were blogging before the phrase had been coined
• Creative Producers build websites, post movies, music and photos to share with the friends, family and the world
• Everyday communicators make their lives easier using texting or MSN
• Information Gatherers are Google and Wikipedia addicts, ‘cutting and pasting’ as a way of life.

Knowledge work requires a different set of “soft” skills that employers need now more than ever, but these are not the skills that kids learn in school, according to this report.  Much of this learning occurs outside of the school setting and in the interactions that Gen Y has through online social networks, creative production, or friend referrals.

This is important for the US education as well.  In my time in the classroom lately as a sub, I see teachers frustrated by kids who misbehave and kids frustrated by assignments that they don’t see relevant to their learning.  A perfect example - a computer class I oversaw this week was held in a regular classroom with the only computer an outdated machine on the teacher’s desk and an assignment to look up vocabulary words out of a book about the history of the computer.  50 minutes of this or 10 minutes of video, audio or blogging around who invented computers.  Which do you think these students would rather have engaged in?

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