John Hibbs's message below seems to challenge the conventional wisdom which holds that the young are ready for the "digital revolution" while their elders resist it.
The resistance to distance learning is not a new phenomenon: it is clear from much research that many young people prefer the conventional classroom, although why this is so is not clear. One possibility is the classroom allows for avoidance of participation, while online learning usually requires regular reading and writing. ( Classroom students apparently get away without buying or borrowing a textbook: how they can do this and pass courses is a mystery to me.) I might be one of those who would resist blogging, and would prefer conventional email. Blogging is less forgiving of half-formed or unformed thinking and errors of fact and syntax and spelling: it puts weaknesses on display for all to see. Further speculation on the cause or causes of this resistance to the new technologies would seem to depend on our further knowledge of what these students are currently doing with their lives that might help to account for their resistance. Steve Eskow [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hibbs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Steve Eskow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "The Digital Divide Network discussion group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 2:34 PM Subject: Re: [DDN] RSS: The Next ICT Literacy Challenge? > At 11:40 AM -0800 1/21/05, Steve Eskow wrote: > > > >His first chapter is called "The Daily Me," and deals with ever increasing > >ability of the new communication technologies to allow their users to > >personalize what they receive, tailor what comes to them so that they only > >hear and see what they want to hear and see. > > Steve, we may have already passed the Rubicon. I have come to know > over 100 college undergraduates quite well. I see them daily, share > many-a-meal, and even have some say in important aspects of their > lives. I'm reasonably sure they like me a lot, and might even respect > me just because of my limited amounts of gray hair. > > But could I interest even one in blogging? Or for that matter the > beauties of education by distance means? Or the NY Times on line? Or > that their employers will expect them to communicate well, which > means lots of reading and writing,all within an intelligently framed > context. > > Nope. Not one bit. They just look at me as some cave man from the Ice Age. > > At lunch they gather around the boob tube, glued to comics, sports or > a really and truly dumb movie. Most dinners, about the same. What > news they get is carefully filtered to their political and athletic > leanings - Bush supporters swear by Fox, leftists are inclined to > MSNBC. Pro sports or collegiate, don't bother me with the other if I > have no interest outside of Eugene and the Ducks. > > Not one takes a daily newspaper, few read the articles I send them > carefully pruned about matters I *thought* would be interesting to > them. Yawn. Yawn. > > Perhaps the worst of this is they hold tight to whatever opinions > they have formed, easily comfortable with the notion that "my opinion > counts just as much as yours." > > Perhaps this all has little to do with the digital divide? Or should > we be expanding our own definition of The Divide? And, in closing, I > love RSS. > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
