Maybe this is why they don’t get it

I caught this off RWW (There is a fee for the report, so I’m copying from the post) – a potential explanation of what one of the reasons might be for the gap between older, established instructors and their young “whipper snapper” students, at least when it comes to social media (and I would think other types of Web2.0-type stuff):

The one thing that Boomers are less likely to do in the online world is actually create content – outside of updating their online profiles and leaving blog comments, that is. Boomers are still not involved heavily in writing blog articles or creating videos and posting them online. In 2008, 16% Younger Boomers were involved in content creation (up from 12% in 2007) and 15% of Older Boomers did so (up from 8%). Although both groups saw an increase, it’s still the least popular activity.

…The group isn’t as active online as younger generations are, but their participation levels are now moderate and increasing.

The best bets for getting Boomers interested in your content is to create blogs or videos that relate to the life or work-style of Boomers, Forrester suggests. And if you’re looking for feedback and contributions from the Boomers themselves – like comments or criticisms – make that process dead simple. Don’t introduce overly complex sign up forms or processes. Instead, encourage low-effort contributions such as star ratings.

It seems that it might not be the “busy” instructor that doesn’t want to participate that slows the adoption of new types of media into th e classroom, it seems that it really might be a generational thing.

But to be fair, I would think that this is an overly simplistic look at the problem and the reasons for early-boomer and “proper boomer” instructors not being involved is that they might have no reason to yet – if it is social media that we are trying to get them involved in, it is not going to go anywhere until they have some social elements that matter to them. Only then will they be able to bring those tools into their classroom.

But it does show that slowly, things are changing, but I wonder if they are going to change fast enough.