One of the EDUCAUSE's Learning Initiative (ELI) focus areas is the Net Generation learner
http://www.educause.edu/NewLearners/5515 described as "Traditional-age students who are now entering colleges and universities may never have known life without the Internet... In many cases, the perspective of the Net Generation varies significantly from that of today's college and university administrators and faculty."
Now that the academic year is in full swing, you may want to compare your views of the characteristics, learning styles and technological expertise of these students. One finding that become very clear is that these students may have only "limited knowledge about how to effectively evaluate online resources and ethically use them."
These students are being exposed to "huge quantities of information on the Web - in text, audio, image and video formats" and are also now "creating information, not just consuming it."
The white paper Ensuring the Net Generation is Net Savvy http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3006.pdf provides an excellent overview of what constitutes the expanded definition of information for today's university students and the need for fluency in many types of literacy - information, visual, and media.
Other white papers in this Net Savviness Series include:
Getting Past Google: Perspectives on Information Literacy from the Millenial Mind
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3007.pdf
How Choice, Co-Creation, and Culture Are Changing What It Means to Be Net Savvy
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3008.pdf
For the perspective from different generations on the use of technology in teaching and learning, you may want to read last fall's If Higher Education Listened to Me . . .
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0550.asp
Four students from three generations - Baby Boomers (born 1946-64), the Generation X-ers (born 1965-80), and the Millennials (born after 1980) - "share their thoughts on the use of technology in teaching and learning, on the role of professors and the adoption of technology by professors, on the importance of technology for social networking, and on university-provided technology services."
