iblee points out that students want libraries.

libraries, students, survey

Inside Higher Ed asks Are College Students Techno Idiots? Slashdot summarized it this way:

Are college students techno idiots? Despite the inflammatory headline, Inside Higher Ed asks an interesting question. The article refers to a recent study by ETS, which analyzed results from 6,300 students who took its ICT Literacy Assessment. The findings show that students don’t know how to judge the authoritativeness or objectivity of web sites, can’t narrow down an overly broad search, and can’t tailor a message to a particular audience. Yikes. According to the article: ‘when asked to select a research statement for a class assignment, only 44 percent identified a statement that captured the assignment’s demands. And when asked to evaluate several Web sites, 52 percent correctly assessed the objectivity of the sites, 65 percent correctly judged for authority, and 72 percent for timeliness. Overall, 49 percent correctly identified the site that satisfied all three criteria.’

Here’s what I mean. Just because about 90% of American teens regularly use the web and over half are on MySpace doesn’t mean that they know a lot (or anything) about technology or critical thinking. To think it does reflects the huge difference between how they use and think about the web and how ‘adults’ do.

That isn’t to say all ‘adults’ are as mistaken as ETS and Inside Higher Ed appear to be. Flickr is a social photo sharing site teaming with ‘adults’ driven with the same motivation teens on MySpace have: to do something fun and share it.

And just because our teens are using the web doesn’t mean they don’t need good, innovative teachers who know how to communicate with them.

[tags]technology, information literacy, technoidiots, teens, students, web[/tags]

Back in August Educated Nation offered the following top ten list of web tools for college students:

• Writely
• Soundslides
• Bluedot.Us
• eFax
• PDF Online
• Google Calendar
• Google Spreadsheets
• Bloglines
• Technorati
• mynoteIT

Not to be outdone, an anonymous-but-first-person story at Nextstudent identifies their top ten:

• Book Finder
• MynoteIT
• Ottobib
• Google Docs
• Tada List
• Meebo
• Wikipedia
• Zoho Show
• Google Reader
• Del.icio.us

best websites, college students, higher ed, students, top ten

They don’t want to engage in chat with their professors in the classroom space, they want to chat with other students in their own space.

— from Eric Gordon’s presentation this morning.

Hey, isn’t that the lesson that smart folks have been offering for a while now: “Nobody cares about you or your site. Really.” How could learning environments not be subject to the same cluetrain forces affecting the rest of the world?

Students love IM. They love Google. They love FaceBook. What does your courseware matter to them?

IM, SSTL2006, academia, academic discourse, chat, nercomp, social software, students

As part of a larger message to faculty returning from winter break, our CIO offered this summary of how he sees advancing internet use affecting higher education:

Are you familiar with blogs and podcasts? Google them, or look them up in Wikipedia. Some of you may already be using these new tools. Others may think these terms are the latest in a sea of techno-jargon. Regardless, your millennial students — the NetGens — are using these new technologies — along with the ubiquitous cell phone — more and more. Google is a first step in most research and you’ll be seeing more references and quotes from Wikipedia. They have more access to more technology than our generations could have ever dreamed of… and more of it is coming right to their cell phones! I’m not suggesting that you suddenly change your teaching processes, but you should be aware of how this generation gets and interacts with information. And to know them is to understand better how to work and communicate with them. Help them to be discerning with the wealth of information they have.

There are lots of studies and research written on our students today. Here are some of my own observations, as a parent and teacher.

• Students’ span of attention may be short, but their capacity to absorb more information and multitask is significant.
   
• Google is the first point in their research. Wikipedia is fast becoming a knowledge base of choice.
   
• This generation of students has vast amounts of information at their fingertips and phone, but they tend to trust too much of what they find as valid.
   
• Students tend to spend more time on their phones and text messaging than they do in email.
   
• Students walk to classes with their MP3 players in their ears. They walk out with cell phones dialed.
   
• They spend significant time online and connected, yet they know or care little about the underlying technology.
   
• They share personal information far more readily in blogs, Facebook.com and other web sites.
   
• Sales of watches are declining because young people have clocks on their cell phones.
   
• All the above are generalizations. Not all students are as ‘wired’ as we assume. We need to be mindful that some students come from homes where there is no internet, no computer and no cell phones.
   

internet, internet and education, higher education, internet and higher education, internet use, students, faculty, learning, millennials, netgen, netgens, millennial students, library, libaries