Toby

Example questions include:
 * Interview with a Digital Native **
 * What is their age/grade? Born in 1982, age 28 so she is at the older end of the spectrum


 * What do they do in their free time? Read, watch TV, go to the gym, communicate by phone, gallivant (my word, not hers)


 * What do they read? In school? On their own? Librarian/mom's recommendations, which end up heavy on the YA lit. She just finished Mockingjay & had a lot to say about the ending, which she found unsatisfying, specifically that there was no improvement or explicit hope for the future, even though the bad guys were graphically and 'clearly, most sincerely' dead!


 * Where do they shop? Mostly online, she's a member of shopping sites, that email her daily featured buys. This is not only an avocation, but since she writes a fashion blog, it's also part of her professional work.


 * What do they worry about? A long list here, including getting a good job, and future marriage and home. She is beginning to reconsider the impracticality of following dreams
 * How do they get their information? Online? Off line? Her day-to-day routine all takes place online. She is connected to constant social networks, "Facebook everyday, Twitter everyday, email everyday - I don't have to look, it's thrown at me constantly."


 * What do they do to relax? Go to the gym, yoga class, TV, hang out with friends


 * What games do they play? "I don't play games" (!!)


 * What is the most significant event that has happened in their life? No answer - I think we weren't able to define the parameters of this question - did anyone else have trouble with it?

In addition, please ask questions about their engagement in school, for example

 * ======What experiences in school really engaged you? Things that dealt with practice, rather than theory, for example, field work to prepare for a real life work experience (she has a teaching certificate in Early Childhood Education), and especially variety in the experiences, i.e. with children of different ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, Montessori etc.======
 * ======How did you use technology in school as opposed to outside of school? In school, technology was a tool to find information and to share information with classmates. Examples: forums, discussion boards, portfolios to store and document work and to make it accessible to others. Outside of school, technology helped her zone out, i.e. viewing YouTube videos, and for recreational information, i.e. where the parties were.======
 * ======What are your pet peeves? "Annoying, arrogant, ignorant or intolerant people, bad drivers, poor grammar"======

Share what you learn from your interview and how this might impact teaching and learning. Post your thoughts on your page and feel free to read and open discussion on your classmates  Reflection: I do see some differences between my Millenial and other, younger Digital Natives. For one thing, it seems that technology is used more for information, both for fun & for work than inherently recreational in itself, i.e. for playing games or for creating new content. I don't know if this is her personal preference, her societally programmed preference because she is a girl or because interactive Web 2.0 tools were not available and used in schools during her formative years. In a way, she seems to have balanced F2F friendships with online social networking but I wonder if it's true that younger DNs spend significantly less time in person and more online. I have seen my (younger) son, for example, sit in the same room with a friend, each on their own laptop, playing digital poker (but was it with each other? I don't know!) I also note that what she does to relax are passive and/or unplugged activities. I think this is indeed a reaction to the constant and overwhelming flow of information. =﻿October 5 article response=

In reading the assigned articles, I couldn't help making a text-to-text connection to the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". Here is a passage from M. T. Anderson's 2002 YA sci-fi novel //Feed (p. 47-48):// Set-up? A group of teenagers have just been caught taking a joyride to the moon. In response, their imbedded 'feed' has been removed.

"I missed the feed. I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.

People were really excited when they first came out with feeds. It was all //da da da your child will have the advantage, encyclopedias at their fingertips, closer than their fingertips, etc.// That's one of the great things about the feed - that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in...

It's more now, it's not so much about the educational stuff but more regarding the fact that everything that goes on, goes on on the feed. All of the feedcasts and the instant news, that's on there, so there's all the entertainment I was missing without a feed, like the girls were all missing their favorite feedcast, this show called //Oh? Wow! Thing!//, which has all these kids like us who do stuff but get all pouty, which is what the girls go crazy for, the poutiness.

But the braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that it knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are. It can tell you how to get them, and help you make buying decisions that are hard. Everything we think and feel is taken in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedlink and OnFeed and American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one that's keyed just to you, and then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and they can get to know what it is we need, so all you have to do is want something and there's a chance it will be yours.

Of course, everyone is like, //da da da evil corporations, oh they're so bad,// we all say that, and we all know they control everything. I mean, it's not great, because who knows what evil...they're up to. Everyone feels bad about that. But they're the only way to get all this stuff, and it's no good getting pissy about it, because they're still going to control everything whether you like it or not. Plus, they keep like everyone in the world employed, so it's not like we could do without them. And it's really great to know everything about everything, whenever we want, to have it just like, in our brain, just sitting there..."

Any comments?