Gen Y - Program and Curriculum Guide

Section I: Chapter 2: Understanding the Program
Summary: The foundation of a successful Gen Y program includes knowledge, preparation, and decision-making.

• What does the name "Gen Y" mean?
• The history of Gen Y
• What happens in a Gen Y course?
• How is Gen Y different than other technology courses?
• What decisions need to be made at a school or district to offer a Gen Y class?

Chapter Excerpt:

How is Gen Y different from other technology courses?
The Gen Y course differs from most other technology courses in two ways:

1. How students learn and integrate technology
2. How students collaborate with teachers and offer technology support to staff

Research tells us that technology affects learning positively when students have significant access to the technology on a regular basis and have the ability to use technology as a tool to create, communicate, and collaborate. Gen Y goes even further�allowing students to help revolutionize education, to become change agents who help infuse technology into many classrooms in many schools.

Gen Y calls for teachers and students to consider the purpose of school, the goals of curriculum and instruction, and the goals of technology use. With traditional technology courses and traditional staff development, technology has entered the schools, but technology education hasn't. The goal of Gen Y is to empower students, provide staff development for teachers, and infuse technology�technology integrated with strong underlying purposes (academic standards and objectives). The underlying purpose and understanding will remain with our students regardless of what changes the technology will inevitably undergo.

In the past, instead of revolutionizing the curriculum, technology has defined its own subject. Computers have been co-opted; their potential revolutionary effect has in many cases been neutralized. Isolated skills and competencies were taught to a limited number of students in computer classes. Gen Y changes that dynamic. With Gen Y students as partners in the change process, teachers are supported in their efforts to employ new tools in their class curriculum. Without a doubt, technology can enhance education, and Gen Y students can facilitate this most powerful tool as it is truly integrated into the curriculum.

Technology instruction for students is a powerful tool, yet it pales when compared with the success observed by offering students the opportunities to use the same technological skills within a content study unit in which they are applied to solve a problem or manage information in an authentic, meaningful way. For computers to be used effectively in classrooms, they must address skills beyond computer use.

While it is important for people to know how to use computers, it is even more important that students learn how to think, solve problems, make decisions, and interact while using those tools. Gen Y allows more complex and sophisticated applications of technology to be incorporated into school classrooms and the academic lives of students.

There is no doubt that technology can improve student learning. With more than two billion Web sites and one billion people using the Web, there exists an untold wealth of information and contacts. Generation Y is helping to define both the technology and the Web landscape. The Generation Y program provides the model that allows students and educators the opportunity to utilize technology to improve schools in meaningful ways.

The manner in which the school staff receives support in their technology implementation is the second major way that Gen Y differs from other technology programs. It marries technology instruction with school professional development. Normally, in traditional staff development, teachers are taught some technology skills in the hope that this training will improve student learning. With Gen Y, students are taught technology skills in the hope that they will partner with teachers to improve instruction.

Next: Chapter 3: Teaching the Curriculum

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