Merlin John Online

Yeah, I know - it's actually older than 15 years, but for all intents and purposes, it really hasn't been that important in our lives until about 1996, and even then we were probably afraid to enter our credit card info into Amazon or eBay. The reality is that the internet is just picking up steam, entering our lives at every junction. Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube are only ten, seven, and six years old, respectively. Who knows what the next 15 years of the net have in store? Not including the under 20's essentially nullifies any argument this study is trying to make. The under 20's were born in the 90's. If you're a 15-year-old in 2011, you were born in the same year as Google. A lot has changed in those 15 years, and a lot has changed since Marc Prensky first wrote of digital natives. Like Abby said, Prensky appears to have been ahead of the times, and perhaps now we're seeing the divide between natives and immigrants more sharply as the internet, smartphones, and social media permeate our lives more readily than ever before. If you've grown up with Google at your fingertips from Day 1, you are a different type of individual than someone who learned how to use Google as an adult. I actually think that the Google generation's fundamental conception of knowledge and information is inherently different than of those born before the 90's. All that being said, as humans we've gone through these types of transitions (adjusting to new technologies) before and eventually some type of equilibrium or 'happy medium' will be reached. It will likely take some time to smooth itself out as new generations of educators slowly enter the workforce and we change our conceptions of learning, teaching, and education. I'd suggest reading Douglas Thomas' and John Seely Brown's "A New Culture of Learning" for a great take on the subject.