Growing Up Online

Bruce Bower of Science News posted an interesting article just over a month ago that looks the way that kids and teens are using the ‘net as they grow older. I found it while working on a presentation for an undergrad class and our student association about being net savy (pointing out trends in use, resources and the like that can help teachers and parents understand and manage the way that their charges use the ‘net in general). The big problem is that for the most part the kids that our teachers are going to be teaching are far more savy than their teachers are, with the exception of the younger DivI kids. For some support, I point you to this press release regarding Larry D. Rosen‘s findings about MySpace not being the “hive of scum and villany” that the media would make it out to be (really people… it’s a few bad eggs and teens with hormones… but the real threat is the bandwidth that it consumes for schools) So this presentation isn’t really going to tell k-12 students much, but with any luck, it will provide some structure for their teachers to understand what all the hub-bub us about when it comes to the ‘net.