Karen Greenwood Henke is a professional writer and speaker on emerging technologies and their role in education. She is also the founder of Grant Wrangler, a free grants and awards listing service.
To learn in the long tail, we need systems that help learners find the content, tools, and communities that match their interests, passions, and needs. At the foundation of businesses that have successfully delivered consumer products in the long tail is a powerful platform. A new service from netTrekker has the potential to be that platform for the education industry.
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Today’s children (ages 3-12) are more experienced using the Internet than previous digital natives. But how are they different from other web users? Jakob Nielsen’s latest usability finds that most of the same web design guidelines apply with some important differences.
First, digital natives have more difficulty distinguishing advertising and promotions from web site content. Where adult Internet users tend to ignore banners and advertising, children are inclined to click and explore everything on the page.
Second, while adults hardly think twice about sharing personal information, children are more aware of privacy and security issues. Digital natives think twice before disclosure.
It seems that we’ve taught our children about stranger danger (in this case, the stranger is a computer), but we need to work on media literacy.