Grown Up Digital

Don Tapscott, who wrote Growing Up Digital, has just come out with a sequel. Grown Up Digital describes a generation now in its teens and twenties who are in college (or very soon to be) or entering the workforce. While Tapscott devotes chapters to various applications of his ideas (business, consumerism, etc.), the most interesting to me is the one on education. Throughout the book, Tapscott describes 8 "norms" that apply to the Net Generation (as he calls them): freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed, and innovation.

How does this apply to information literacy? Let me take a stab at that.

Speed? Unless students are given a *very* good reason to look at print materials, they are going to go for the online (from anywhere) sources every time.

Integrity? Students expect assignments to be honest. They reject busywork but can see the value of an assignment that is going to model some real-world behavior that they can envision themselves doing in the future.

Assignments need to be fun, not merely frustrating. They need some flexibility (freedom and customization). Ideally, they should involve the student in some sort of collaboration (with the instructor, the librarian, other students, others?).

Scrutiny? This generation already goes first to the Internet before they make a purchase, to see what others are saying. Help students learn to scrutinize information sources for themselves (Google vs. the library databases). Have them do the same assignment both ways, and compare the end result. Have different groups do it different ways, and come back together to compare notes.

Innovation? What new ideas can your own students generate to help themselves (and others) acquire information literacy skills? Why not ask them how they would go about learning these things?