Teaching the Net Generation: THE RESPONSE

Teaching the Net Generation has proven arduous for most teachers. Being that the internet doesn’t provide a criteria based rubric to inform teachers of what the student has and hasn’t learned from the net, makes it very difficult for a teacher to grasp where the student’s knowledge rest and easy for the student to disguise his/her deficiencies. For instance, a quick reference to a particular historical website that the student may visit frequently, due to his/her own special interest, may give the teacher the impression that the student is knowledgeable of all historical facts, when in actually it may only be a section of history that the student actually knows. In addition, after factoring in the possibility that the section of history that the student has mastered may have derived from the writings of only one author, who may or may not be an expert in that historical field, an even greater challenge for teachers may arise. For now, the teacher has to spend quality class time to convince the student that the information he/she has digested as truth is truly false. This can prove to be a nearly impossible task, since despite the fact that the internet allows any and everyone the opportunity to write on any given topic, many students of the NET Generation believe, as they do about all broadcasted media, that everything that is published publically is as fact. Therefore, anyone who challenges what he/she has learned through publication is hereby wrong in the student’s mind, teacher or not.


Another problem that teachers often face when teaching those of the Net Generation is proving the importance of sentence structure, proper grammar, and the need for subject –verb agreement within each sentence. Due to the fact that the internet not only condones the misspelling of words and the improper abbreviation of phrase, English skills aren’t only ignored but lost. This reality has stripped students of the necessary written communication skills needed to perform career task. Many students have even told teachers, much like myself, to ignore the sentence structure mistakes and word misspellings in their writings and concentrate more on the content; a technique that is often practice on the NET.


So where has the NET left the NET Generation? Has it left them better off or destined to be left behind? Has gaining knowledge on the internet been more of a help or hinder to students? How has it affected the classrooms, and the student’s honest career opportunities? The honest truth, I doubt will be published over the internet. Therefore, I fear, the Net Generation may never know it.