Are wired kids well served by schools?

Researchers from the University of Southern California and University of California at Berkeley presented their first findings from one of the largest ethnographic studies on kids in digital environments. Kids have long been attracted to extracurricular activities like dance or sports, but researchers say digital media is bringing up a new generation who are creators of media rather than just passive consumers of it. Within these digital environments among peers, kids who create and evaluate media are deriving a sense of competence, autonomy, self-determination and connectedness, researchers say. "Kids associate one word with school -- 'boring,'" said Deborah Stipek, dean and professor of education at Stanford. But kids' levels of engagement with the Internet and games could give educators new ideas for upping school's status. "The question becomes what is the role of school in this larger environment," Stipek said. Are schools disconnected from real-world tech skills? Dale Dougherty, founding editor and publisher of Make and Craft magazines, said during the panel that his team asked an audience of programmers where they learned to write code. Only 15 percent said that they learned programming at school. The full research will be published later this year as part of a MacArthur Foundation grant.
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