Lit Review: Gen Y

Educational Horizons 2010
Gen Y: Who they are and how they learnBy: Alison Black

Teaching today’s students is a very daunting task to undertake as an educator. In order to engage the Gen Y student you need to incorporate technology into everything you do in your classroom. Students today are not the pen and paper type of learners. They are unable to sit and listen to a lecture in class and be able to take anything educational away from it. They need to be “entertained” using some sort of technology to gain their attention in class. Today’s students are very dependent on technology. They need to use it in all aspects of their lives using a cell phone, computer, or gaming system. Of the three I mentioned almost every student has at least two of them if not all of them. So since technology is such a huge factor in the Gen Y era than why is it so many teachers are not able to teach them? A majority of today’s teachers are know as “digital immigrants”, people who were not brought up using technology. They still tend to teach their classes today the same way they would 10 years ago. In order for you to be successful as an educator today you would need to insert technology into your lesson plans and into your classroom as a whole. To grab the students attention and to get them interested in what is being taught they need to learn using the tools that they are familiar with. Technology is today and is our future in teaching so in order for us to be able to educate our kids we need to educate the digital natives. They are the ones who educate our future and to be able to make progress towards our future, our past needs to be educated by Gen Y.http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ872487.pdf