David Warlick, in his blog, wrote on Monday about how kids don’t think of Web 2.0 as something “new.” For them, today’s Internet is how the Internet has always been. From their perspective, where we are now is Web 1.0.

I think he’s right.

My fourth graders were in at lunchtime for Podcasting Club. A couple of kids are a project ahead of the others. One decided to do a story about hockey scores and jumped to NHL.com, where he showed us how he can watch the major moments of many professional hockey games. Were there eight goals in the game? Watch a video of each one. The site can also sort so you can see all of each player’s goals, cross-referenced by opposing team and date. And the video takes no time at all to load.

Needless to say, we were soon all focusing on NHL.com as he effortlessly moved between screens.

“You know,” I said, “when we first had Internet in schools, there weren’t any videos online. Now you can watch TV online. In fact, my friend is teaching in Romania this year, and she can keep up with American TV through the Internet. None of that was possible just a few years ago.”

“Why not?”

“We didn’t have fast connections. We had to use dial-up, which meant we got the Internet through our phone lines. And that was slow. You couldn’t talk on the phone and be on the Internet at the same time.”

“We have Comcast [cable Internet], so we can talk while we’re online,” said one kid. “And you could always use your cell phone,” said another.

Gulp. I hadn’t even thought of cell phones. Did I even have one of those, way back around 1995 when I inherited my first Mac Classic modem from a friend?

“In fact, when I got my first email account, we didn’t even have photos on Web sites – they took too long to load.”

More blank looks. Oh my gosh, I thought, this is like when my grandfather admitted he had never seen a magic marker before. Who hadn’t heard of a magic marker? So I decided not to point out that part of why we didn’t have photos is because we were still carrying around cameras with FILM in them.

Yipes. My students had no perspective of the days when Web pages all had Times New Roman font and a mild gray background. They wouldn’t recognize the screeching whine of a dial-up signal. They have probably never been in the car without an adult who carried a cell phone. Their parents regularly catch up on missed episodes of Grey’s Anatomy by watching it online. They care for their Webkinz online and can tell you all the best parts of the Animal Planet Web site (Meerkat Manor, in case you’re wondering). Their idea of old technology is their grandmother’s computer, which is Internet-connected, though it’s, “Old. From the 20^th century.”

My idea of old technology? Atari, Commodore 64, and Apple II+ . Oh, I thought MECC’s Lemonade Stand and the earliest Oregon Trail (big delay between when you fired your rifle at the deer and when it actually made contact) were awesome.

And what’s the point of this anecdote? That our kids don’t see Web 2.0 as something “new” but rather as an extension of a familiar world in which, in the words of Marc Prensky, they are “natives.” (Prensky’s division of humankind into “digital natives” — kids who have always known a digital world — and “digital immigrants” — those of us who remember life before the Internet feels a bit simplified to me. Am I an immigrant when I grew up being the first kid I knew who had a home computer? Or does that make me a native, even though I didn’t have the Internet?)

In other words, we return to Warlick’s comment: this isn’t their 2nd generation Web. It’s their beta.

Just like us, students are on a technology journey. Some parts of technology are stable for them, and some are emerging. Most high schoolers remember life before Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube, just like we do!

In one way, kids’ “native” experiences with the digital world help us find an interactive, teacher-student relationship that can be more equitable. I can learn about NHL.com from my student, who can learn about Grolier from me. It helps us be “guides from the side,” to learn collaboratively with/from students.

When we’re in the realm of entertainment, we might be on an equal playing field with our students, and our students might even have a slight advantage in some situations. They certainly have a facility and a fearlessness with exploring digital content on a variety of devices.

But when we ask students to move beyond finding entertainment in a site, as Sheryl pointed out in an early blog comment, they still need our help in making good decisions, being safe online, and helping to present their learnings, understandings, and viewpoints of the world. And in that situation, maybe we’re the natives and they are the newcomers. We’ve earned our perspective through our own experiences, education, and choices.

Not to mention the hours we’ve racked up waiting, praying, for the dial-up connection to go through the first time. Part of how we learned to be judicious about Web searches and Web use is because we had to wait for a page to load. We learned to scan the results and pick only the results that looked useful, because it was a waste of time to click randomly. That’s an advantage that we gain from having been part of the growth of the early Internet. We have a perspective precisely because we’ve watched how the digital world has impacted us throughout the decades.

(Flashback: Do you remember the first time Google took less than a second to search on your behalf? How cool was that? Be honest. Very cool.)

Join the Conversation

OK, here’s your chance … go ahead. Share those technology anecdotes that make you feel OLD. “20^th CENTURY” OLD.

Or, let’s talk about the difference between Web as entertainment and Web as meaningful information source. Is there a difference? Does it matter?

(FYI – Your comment will be reviewed before it appears here, but only to make sure it is not spam, illegal, or in violation of someone’s civil rights. We welcome diverse opinions.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under Role of the SLMS, Web 2.0 - General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.