Generations Online in 2010

Reading the PEW Center's research about online activity was pretty enlightening. I'm not about to say I was surprised by many of its conclusions. I had a hunch that people were using social media more. I knew that older folks were probably slowly adopting online activities, etc. But there were some things that made me think or changed my perspective.

1. Blogging on the decline: I didn't expect this. I thought for sure blogging was alive and well, but it seems that truncated and multimodal versions of blogging - videos and social media - have started to steal blogging's thunder a little bit. I wonder if this is just evidence that people are going from stop to stop faster while they're on the web? This also tells me that video and social media could be good venues for people to publish and present their thoughts. This also interesting when you consider that the WIDE report found that students were often writing privately and for self-fullfillment. My gut reaction would be to think that blogging is the ideal venue for this, but it seems that, again, truncated media are probably ruling the proverbial roost: SMS, social media, etc. This raises the question: if we're to tap into the already-present literate activity of students, how do we incorporate these shorter forms into a classroom? In answering this question, maybe we'll find a way to place more value on these forms, too.

2. Availability: In reading about reasons why 21% of people weren't on the web, I was happy to find that only 5.88% of ALL people were offline because of availability reasons. As someone who's considering community college work, namely with displaced workers and non-traditional students, this is encouraging. I would have guessed the numbers to be higher. With any luck, this number will continue to dwindle as hardware and internet become less expensive and more readily available, especially in rural and poor areas.

3. Gaming: It's really no surprise that the youngest generation (12-17) is leading the charge here (78% adoption rate), but it was kind of eye opening that the number drops 28% when you move to the next generation (18-33). It really raises questions, at least to me, about the gaming movement. If only half of people are comfortable gamers in my target demographic, is it really fair/appropriate to using gaming for pedagogical ends? On the continuum of importance, where does gaming lie in terms of literate activities?

Part of my teachnology statement talks about keeping a finger on the pulse of technology. These sort of reports, then, are the stethoscope that allow folks like us to really anticipate student needs.