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Colton Doyle

Your Teacher’s Name

Class Name and Period

Date

Digital education and the growing generational gap

I remember when I was younger I used to always play my WII with my grandparents, but

as I got older and more involved with technology I always found that I was helping my

grandparents with any tech related things. As I started grade 6, my school got a brand new set of

chrome books for my class and we began using them everyday. I began to see first hand that

education itself was changing and that my generation was using the cutting edge of technology.

As we began to do school assignments I began to discover, that just like my grandparents, my

older teachers also began to struggle. I began to think that, like many others, it was just the fact

that my generation grew up with it and theirs did not. However, as some may argue it's not the

generation, but rather the way it was introduced to them.

The concept of the newer or younger generations, born after 1982, are different or even

more evolved has become so mixed with pop culture it is almost fact at this point. However, as

Bullen et al. argue, it's not the generation but rather who had access to the technology. In a study

done in 2008 involving a total of 438 participants interviewed from several different age groups

and programs designed to further research the implication that generation is the problem with the

lack of ICTs in schools. Ultimately they ended the survey interviewing a group of 78 percent of

people who are a part of the net generation and 22 percent that weren't, and they concluded that

we need to move away from a generational bias towards technology and should introduce
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technology in schools whether we believe or not that previous generations of students and

teachers can't handle it. Because as this study shows there is no difference between our

generations other than access to the technology and willingness to use it.

As of late, colleges and universities have been slowly transitioning towards a more

technological take on education. However, within the last couple years that change has taken a

more abrupt turn as many schools turn to online classes to help deal with the pandemic. Still an

everlasting question remains, is the net generation different from the previous generations. One

study by Jones, C., & Healing, G.argues that it's the generation that's the problem and not the

technology. Their paper and argument was based off of a two year study that lasted from 2008

until 2009. The main thing they found in this research is that over 80 percent of people are

confident in using technology in a school setting and the main difference between the confidence

levels of people was age. They also found that a famiralty towards technology by a younger

generation lead them to be more confident and accepting towards new technology being

introduced.

Both of these papers have opposite viewpoints. Bullens et al. lean towards the argument

that it is not the generation that's the problem, but rather it is the access to the technology,

whereas Jones and Healing argues that it is the generation that's the problem, not the technology.

However these two arguments do overlap on some levels. They both believe that technology

should be used in schools and higher education and they both truly believe that the future is in

technology and that schools need it.

In conclusion both sides present arguments with polarizing opinions, but overall they

both agree that schools need technology and whether the generationional gap can be solved or
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not we need to use ICTs in schools .