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Grown Up Digital Chapter 5: The Net Generation as Learners.

The summary of this chapter is pretty obvious. The world is changing, information exchange, global business, communication and the list can go on. Somehow education and its system of delivery has not. The education system in our country is still designed for the Industrial Age; revolving around the teacher and the lecture. Unbelieveably to many they are poised to become the most educated generation Americans ever. They also care about the education they recieve and want to excel. They just prefer the information to be broadcast to them in a media they are familiar with rather than the one the current establishment continues to use. He made an interesting analogy between business that loses 3 of ten customers to education who is not graduating 3 of 10 students. Business analyzes the why and changes; education continues down the same corridor and blames parents and kids. Todays students need input and interaction in regards to what they are learning as well as how they are learning. Change needs to happen even if it is slowly; Educators need to step off the stage, the need to encourage students to discover on their own, and allow collaboration between students. May favorite excerpt from the chapter is on page 134, "Schools should be places to learn, not to teach."

Grown Up Digital Chapter 9: The Net Generation and Democracy.

This chapter was intersting at some level, but difficult for me to really engage in. I do belive that the use of social networking helped Senator Obama win the election by involving and engaging more of the Net Generation voters who may have not been involved. Some things that really stood out to me during this chapter is that the Net Generation does care and is involved in their communities and country as a whole. Just as the Net Generation has hand an effect on the way America does business, they will have an equal effect on the way America does politics from this point forward.Net Gen does feel like they have the power to make a change. Their ability to communicate instantly with social networking, and instant messaging can change the landscape of the political scene. Their involvement is increasing;in 1996 when the Net Generation first entered the voting age, 8 million voters turned out. in 2008 that number has increased to over 13 millon. Another major change is the ability to finance a political campaign; often times this is reserved for only the select few with large donors backing the candidate. In the Obama campaign, 43% of his donors contributed less than $200.00, but still raised over 265 million. In addition to the campaign fundraising, the new digital political scene holds candidates to their word, because everything is documented from what you said to where you were. Finally the use of digital media from the Net Generation will change the "we vote you rule" political system to one that every citizen actually has a voice. Allowing our political system to step away from the brodcast move toward a true participtory democracy as it was intended to be.