I recently spent a week of vacation with family, including my four teenage cousins. Looking back on that week I realize two things: 1) I am getting old; and, 2). I need to adjust how I do training with the younger generation.
Two examples stand out during my vacation. The first was when my 15-year old cousin, Alison, managed to hold a conversation with my aunt and myself while texting back and forth with her mom and a friend. She never missed a beat of our conversation and managed to text pretty inconspicuously, too. She balanced everything very well.
The second example was when I was working on a PowerPoint presentation for an upcoming training class and my 14-year old cousin, Marcus, stopped by to watch me work on it. He said that he knew PowerPoint so I decided to use this as a learning opportunity, for myself and for him. I showed him a few advanced tasks in PowerPoint and asked if he knew how to do them. He didn’t know how to do them, but picked them up immediately as I showed them to him. He then took what I had shown him and tried a few other tasks, just to see how far PowerPoint could go in animation. He was fearless in his trials and didn’t get frustrated when something didn’t work right. He just kept going until he figured how to do the task or until he found PowerPoint’s limits.
I learned that I am going to have to really test and push the limits of the software that I teach to the younger generation that is entering the workforce right now!
While thinking about those two examples, I remembered a workshop I attended a couple of years ago. It was entitled “Digital Natives versus Digital Immigrants”, which basically refers to younger people who have grown up with computers (natives), and those of us that were around in a pre-Facebook and Twitter world (immigrants) .
Marcus’ characteristic of fearless experimentation and Alison’s ability to juggle technology without hitting information overload are two traits that seem to be innate in digital natives. All four of my cousin fall into the category of digital natives. They have grown up using computers, the Internet, cell phones, etc.
The other group are the digital immigrants. (I happen to fall into the transitional generation between digital natives and digital immigrants. I have characteristics from both groups since I grew up with computers but did not have Internet and cell phones until college.) Digital immigrants knew what life was like before the computer, Internet, cell phones, etc. Digital immigrants may assimilate and use/enjoy all of the available technology tools but still have some habits from their prior life. I think about how I sometimes print an email to read it on paper instead of on the screen. Also, some of my older colleagues still compose their writings on paper before entering them into their computers.
As I look at all of this in the context of training, I see many ways that I will be adjusting my classes and workshops as I encounter more digital natives in the classroom.
