Harvard law professor John Palfrey's new book examines the lives of digital natives.
The first generation of “digital natives”—those born after 1980 into a digital, online world—now influences everything from pop culture to politics, and much research suggests that this generation of young students thinks, works and learns in a very different way from previous generations. These factors in particular have implications for nearly every aspect of society, from parenting to education. In their recent book, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, law professors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser present a thorough study of the digital native generation, based on analyses of existing research as well as hundreds of interviews with digital natives and the teachers, librarians and psychologists who educate and observe them in the United States and around the world. Palfrey is Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and vice dean for library and information resources at Harvard Law School, as well as faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a Harvard research center dedicated to the study of the development of cyberspace, in addition to Internet law and policy. We spoke with him about the ways in which digital natives learn and absorb information, online safety concerns for students in the digital age, and the implications for K12 school administration.
Q: Describe the stages digital natives go through as they absorb information.
JP: This topic is an important and fast-changing area of scholarship. The first stage is “grazing.” Instead of sitting down every morning to read the paper, for example, digital natives go through the day absorbing information, via a Yahoo reader, RSS feed, Facebook and the like. A subset will take the second step, the “deep dive,” where they are looking for further analysis by clicking on a hypertext link, hearing a podcast, or seeing what their friends think. This stage is like actually reading a newspaper article instead of just the headline. The third step is the most engaged, the “feedback loop,” where they engage the information on a deeper level, critique it and share it by posting it in their Facebook profile or on Twitter.
The fear here is that students will only use these tools to go through the first or second step. Students getting the most educational benefit and absorbing the most information are going through all three steps.
Should this three-step process be replicated in schools, putting the focus on this methodology and not on the technology itself?
JP: That’s true, and I think that’s crucial when we think about technology. The technology should not dictate to us how we use it. We should instead ask the questions: “What do we want to accomplish in the classroom?” and “Can this technology help us?” And if so, we should use it. The schools that figure out how technology informs pedagogy are going to have the most success.
The schools that figure out how technology informs pedagogy are going to have the most success.
You argue that some digital natives are able to discern the quality of information online while others are not. Do you see schools playing a role in helping young people do this?
JP: Absolutely. This is one place where you can also bring in librarians. Historically, the job of a school librarian is to select high quality information, to include that in a collection, make it accessible, and help students find it when they need it. That same series of tasks is even more important in the digital era.
So you believe that librarians are more important today, not less? Some may find that idea counterintuitive.
JP: I do. I’ve heard a line many times, that because of Google, librarians are obsolete in the digital age. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There in fact is greater need for librarians to play a key role in giving students access to the best information and, more importantly, in giving students the skills to do this themselves.
Do the tools of the digital world enable this generation to be more creative?
JP: It would be a mistake to argue that kids today are more creative than in the past. What we are seeing now are some very interesting ways to be creative, for kids to tell their own story. It’s more YouTube and less Disney. The generally accepted hypothesis is that in the digital environment there are possibilities for student creativity that weren’t there before, but it’s unclear whether this is the case or is just the hope of academics. Frankly, in our research, we found fewer examples of this than we hoped. In many respects there is a pathway [to greater creativity] there, but it is not happening on its own. The role of administrators needs to be pointing out the technological tools for creativity and encouraging their use.
What steps can or should schools take to address digital safety issues like cyberbullying or identity theft?
JP: One crucial aspect of what schools need to do is to start a conversation grounded in real practice, to find out what young people are involved with online and get them to talk about it. The same rules about bullying apply to cyberbullying. It’s more complicated in some respects because these environments keep changing. Nevertheless, the process needs to be one where adults are listening to young people, understanding their practices, and helping them to be smarter about how they go about their lives in cyberspace. Most of the time, things are no different in the digital space than they are in the physical space. What’s changed here is the context, not the basic issues. The online practices that young people are engaged in are not as foreign as they may seem initially to educators.
