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TITLE: The Anthropology of Digital Natives
SPEAKER: Edith Ackermann
EVENT DATE: 04/07/2008
RUNNING TIME: 119 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Young people today born into a digital world are experiencing a far different environment of information-gathering and access to knowledge than a generation ago. Who are these "digital natives" and what are they thinking? How are they using the technology, and are IT experts adequately responding to them?
These questions will be addressed in a new Library of Congress series titled "Digital Natives." The four-lecture series will examine the generation that has been raised with the computer as a natural part of their lives, with emphasis on the young people currently in schools and colleges today. The series will seek to understand the practices and culture of these digital natives, the cultural implications of the phenomenon and the implications for education -- schools, universities and libraries.
This first lecture explores how young people think, learn and play. Speaker Edith Ackermann is particularly interested in helping shape the future of play and learning in a digital world. "I study how people use place, relate to others and treat things to find their ways -- and voices -- in an ever-changing world," she said.
Speaker Biography: Distinguished scholar and child-development expert Edith Ackermann is an honorary professor of developmental psychology at the University of Aix-Marseille in France. She is currently a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the School of Architecture and a visiting professor at the University of Siena in the Department of Communications.