Garcia Rueda, Jose Jesus, Fernando Saez Vacas

The interconnected youngsters: when students teach us how to use technology to learn

Abstract

Nowadays, when teenagers leave school for their home everyday, they usually don't say "Goodbye. See you tomorrow". Actually, they will keep in touch each other constantly. During the long evening hours to follow, our teenagers will send and receive several SMS messages, will chat for a while, and perhaps, if that is not enough, they will talk on the phone. In a word: they don't stop interacting. Fortunately for fathers and teachers, they will not talk just about school's gossip. They will use chat to talk also about the courses they are taking, and will send each other emails with notes, assignments and so on. It can be stated that nowadays teenagers cannot conceive a world in which they were supposed to stay quietly studying a whole evening, under the light of a table lamp, in complete isolation from all their mates. And those cyberbabies are beginning now their degrees at our traditional universities. What will turn out of that meeting? Maybe these institutions will make them adapt to the old tradition of lonely study sessions with boring textbooks. But maybe, if we are lucky, teachers will find out a way to take advantage of the exciting features of their new students. Thousands of researchers trying to find a way to use effectively Internet in education, and perhaps the solution is right before our eyes: cyberbabies may have the answer. This paper intends to be just a reflection on how education is going to change, not because of the efforts of governments and academic institutions, but because of the new generations of students.