Talking to the great Michael Stoddart (Stod) around the proverbial water cooler, he stated that under-25’s don’t learn the same way as us Generation-X and cusp-Baby Boomers.
Rather than learn by rote the ins-and-outs of a “new thing”, the Generation-Y’s remember the tags and “where to access” the information – knowing that if they ever need the information in the future, they’ll use the “tags” to grab the info.
Also, Generation-Y are experienced with the media-savvy breadth of info, and know how to “filter” out the noise.
Last week, Uncle Mike asked about my “take” on tags.
Now I get it – “tags” are a memory access method, a digital mnemonic.
Rote learning just doesn’t work in a stream-of-media world.
I’d love to get into the understanding of Learning; time doesn’t permit so I’ll tag it, and move on.
UncleNick,
good to see you grok the tag world.
not sure I completely understand your take on it, but here is one thing i am finding:
– it is actually quite hard to find stuff you have tagged down the track
– that doesn’t matter because more good information than you can possibly digest will ‘wash up onto your beach’ each day via rss feeds for tags
UncleMike
Yeah, sometimes I am a little obtuse!
Trying “connect” the current online generation, how they “remember and learn” stuff. They are very different to us old blokes: because of the amount of media they are exposed to: 100+ channel TV, blogs, email, IM, SMS, mobiles, web, DVDs, iTunes, iPods etc etc… their brains are wired to connect to how and where to find information.
Us older types attempt to absorb everything in one go: read a book cover to cover, write notes, file alphabetically…
So the online generation find “tags” a great way to be the method of reconnection.
Finding via tags: maybe a better interface is required to the “tagosphere“?