The quiet revolution of consumer IT reached a climax recently with the widespread adoption of smart consumer devices and their rapid penetration into enterprise IT applications. This significant change of attitude, as well as the reliance on information technology has been referred to as "Consumerization of Information Technology"…

The current crop of "digital natives"--kids born into a world of modern technology--has been immersed in a world of video games, computers, digital music players, and cell phones from an early age. Shaped by the Internet, Google searches, and instant messaging, they can't imagine life without technology. Theirs is a vastly different world from…

The Millennial Generation is a subject of paramount interest for 21st-century educators. It is a generation unlike its predecessors, with some stating it is the most intelligent consumer generation in history. Experts in the fields of neurobiology and psychology have found that Millennial brains may actually be "physically different" because of…

What do principals need to know about the use of electronic textbooks? Students, referred to as the Millennials or the Net Generation, born between 1980 and the present, have very different learning styles than those of previous generations. They were born into a world of everyday applications of technology and have utilized it from a very young…

A new generation of consumer and tech savvy college students have forever altered the method and degree of interaction between faculty and student. The purpose of the article is to describe the challenges of mentoring a new generation of health educators. The authors will summarize the literature on generational group characteristics that may…

More than a decade after Prensky's influential articulation of digital natives and immigrants, disagreement exists around these characterizations of students and the impact of such notions within higher education. Perceptions of today's undergraduate learners as tech-savvy "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001a), who both want and need the…

Government attention (in England and elsewhere) has been drawn to the role of technology in supporting learning in families. However, sociologists of education highlight that parent's ability to engage with their children's education and learning is not a straightforward issue. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper attempts to open up…

Colleges and universities have spent significant financial and human resources deploying and promoting educational technologies, including Learning Management Systems (LMS). A large body of research now exists on the impact of technology on student learning, including the roles of blended learning, hybrid classes, and distance learning. Yet,…

Schooled in an earlier time, educators are laboring to find meaningful purchase in new media environments, unable to match the fluency and sophistication of their "digital native" students. Yet is Marc Prensky's portrayal of teachers as "digital immigrants" really an accurate rendering of the today's situation? Drawing on phenomenological and…

There have been many attempts to define the generation of students who emerged with the Web and new digital technologies in the early 1990s. The term "digital native" refers to the generation born after 1980, which has grown up in a world where digital technologies and the internet are a normal part of everyday life. Young people…

Seismic Shifts. Future Forces. Call them whatever you'd like. The Sixteen Trends revealed in this benchmark book will have a profound impact on our future. Noted futurist, educator, communicator, executive and leadership counsel, author, and international speaker Gary Marx makes the case for those trends and speculates on their implications for…

In recent years, terms such as "social media" and "social networking" have become staples in the university continuing education marketer's vocabulary. This article provides both a working knowledge of the social media landscape and practical applications of the concepts using a case study approach from a Midwestern university.…

For the past eight years, the Speak Up National Research Project has endeavored to stimulate new discussions around these kinds of questions and to provide a context to help education, parent, policy and business leaders think beyond today and envision tomorrow. This report is the first in a two part series to document the key national findings…