“Gibt es eine Net Generation?” (PDF) - ZHW - Universität Hamburg

Schulmeister: Gibt es eine Net Generation?
learning processes, outcomes, and assessment practices.
4. Managing and aligning pedagogical, technical and administrative issues is a necessary
condition of success when using emerging technologies for learning.
5. Innovation with learning technologies typically requires the development of new
learning and teaching and technology-based skills, which is effortful for both students
and staff.
6. The use of emerging technologies for learning and teaching can challenge current
university policies in learning and teaching and IT.«
Einer der kompetentesten Kritiker der Digital Natives-These ist David Buckingham, Professor
für Erziehungswissenschaft und Direktor des Centre for the Study of Children,
Youth and Media im Institute of Education der University of London. In einem von ihm
herausgegebenen Sammelband zur Identitätsentwicklung Jugendlicher (Buckingham
2008) äußert er sich unverblümt zu den Thesen von Tapscott und Prensky, denen er
»Wishful thinking« und einen »relentlessly optimistic view« vorwirft:
»The technologically determinist stance adopted by these authors means that there are
many issues and phenomena that they are bound to ignore. They tend to neglect the
fundamental continuities and interdependencies between new media and ›old‹ media
(such as television)—continuities that exist at the level of form and content, as well as
in terms of economics. A longer historical view clearly shows that old and new technologies
often come to coexist: particularly in the area of media, the advent of a new
technology may change the functions or uses of old technologies, but it rarely completely
displaces them.« (14)
Tapscott und Prensky übersähen, so Buckingham, die Konvergenzen der Medien, sie
würden die Medienentwicklung als eine determinierende Kraft betrachten, die Jugendliche
prägt, auf diese Weise die Interaktion zwischen Individuum und Medien negierend,
eine Kritik, die auch von den Reihenherausgebern der MacArthur Foundation, Mizuko
Ito, Cathy Davidson, Henry Jenkins u.a. geteilt wird (ibid, ix). Dieses Argument
führt er in der früheren Publikation »Digital Generations« (Buckingham 2006) noch
deutlicher aus:
»Tapscott‘s approach is clearly based on a form of technological determinism. From
this perspective, technology is seen to emerge from a neutral process of scientific research
and development, rather than from the interplay of complex social, economic,
and political forces. It is then seen to have effects—to bring about social, psychological,
and political changes—irrespective of the ways in which it is used, and of the social
contexts and processes into which it enters. Technology is regarded as an autonomous
force that is somehow independent of human society and acts on it from poutside.
This view connects with a familiar rhetoric about the information society (or the
knowledge economy), which similarly appears to attribute a determining power to
some disembodied force (information).« (9)
Sie würden die Jugend in einem romantischen Licht zeichnen und die Digital Divide
leugnen, vor allem aber die Qualität der jugendlichen Betätigung nicht kritisch betrachten:
»this account of the ›digital generation‹ is also bound to ignore what one can
only call the banality of much new media use. Recent studies suggest that most young
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