Are we really delivering Yesterday's education for tomorrows kids.? I think that todays generation is far ahead of the times when their parents used to study so to measure them with the same scale would be unjustified and not valid as well. The pressures that the kids now face is totally different than the ones that I used to face. Some call it the "Generation Gap".
The approach to educating them has to be based on what's in it for me? The Digital natives as called by Prensky(2001) are always on the move and are looking for engagement for even the shortest time span. The classroom teching has to be engaging for them to be attentive or they would lose interest in the subject as well as the teacher. The course material has to be intersting, presented in a manner that they can associate with and also participate in. Gone are the days when the teachers could come in,lecture and cover their topic.
To generalise the whole generation of the kids would not be right as Thrupp(2009) claims"Those learners who engage with ICT do not necessarily all engage with the same ICT artefacts;
and those who engage with the same artefact do not necessarily do so with the same level of interest".
My son who is in Year 6 has recently got an ICT champion badge for the work he did in getting his ICT licence in the first month of getting his laptop from the shcool whereas there are lot of students in the class who inspite of having the laptops for a considerably long time never got around to doing it.
So I think as a teacher it is very important for us to understand the ICT needs of the children and to say "one size fits all" would not be right.
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