Ngeners

Texto retirado da introdução do livro "Educating the net generation":

It started with our children. Trying to get them to study without the TV and radio was rarely successful. (We succeeded—temporarily—when the house had been struck by lightning and almost all the household electronics were "fried.") Trying to concentrate with the stereo on drove us crazy, but didn’t seem to have any impact on them. None of our dire predictions about poor grades materialized. We probably rented as many games from Blockbuster as we did videos. At one point we thought we’d better find out what these games were all about. They let us try a game—something to do with Grand Prix auto racing. We both drove the car right into the wall. One dose of humiliation was enough to convince us that our visual-spatial skills would be no match for theirs, no matter how much we practiced.
The youngest used to arrive home after school and shout, "Hi, Mom, I’m home. Are you on the Internet?" Those were the days of dial-up, of course. I had to get offline so he could get on. He wouldn’t go outside with his friends until he’d checked e-mail and chatted with his online pals. It seemed odd, but to many parents, the teenage years are just that—odd.
Sometimes we’d ask them about information technology. We’ve gotten used to seeing the semi-surprised look on their faces when we’d ask what seem to be reasonable questions about technology. They were polite enough not to say, "Are you serious?" but we could tell they thought that by looking at them. And, like many parents, when it comes to getting consumer electronics information—a new cell phone plan, for example—we’d ask the kids to figure it out for us. You don’t need to ask who set up the VCRs, remote controls, and DVD players in our house, do you?
Many of you have probably had similar experiences with your children, nieces or nephews, or even grandchildren. These situations often lead us to say, "That’s not how it was when I was growing up."
But it all started to make more sense on Sundays. On Sunday nights we have the tradition of getting the family together for dinner. We thought we could use these occasions to help the children hone their critical thinking, powers of persuasion, and appreciation of the world around them. Well, perhaps we did. But we are the ones who learned the most.
We learned about technology. Even our least technologically inclined son could tell us things about graphics and images that we didn’t know. He has a digital literacy that eludes us. We heard about experiential learning. Each one of the kids has talked about wanting—and needing—hands-on experiences to learn. At first we thought it was due to all those hours with LEGOs when they were young. We now think it is something more significant. We learned many other things as well. What we assumed was impatience is something they consider immediacy—responses are supposed to be fast. The list goes on and on.
The relevance of what we were hearing applies to more than parenting, though. We probably speak for most educators when we say that not only do we not really understand our children, but we don’t really understand our students the way we’d like to.

pdf aqui

Penso que este texto ilustra bem a realidade das novas gerações habituadas á internet. Gerações que se habituaram a ter respostas imediatas ás suas dúvidas, acesso a todo o tipo de informação e a todos os cantos do mundo.
Acredito que o conflito de gerações se deve um pouco á falta de informação que as gerações anteriores a esta têm em relação ás novas tecnologias como a internet; normalmente tem-se medo daquilo que se desconhece, assim as gerações anteriores têm tendência a afastarem-se destes novos fenómenos, não os compreendendo.
Também os filhos, os ngeners, não compreendem a incompreensão dos pais em relação e todas estas novidades, isto porque para eles, os ngeners, isto não são novidades, são coisas que cresceram e se adaptaram a eles.