Want to know a bit more about the places that our teens are visitng on the net – here’s a comment from an article I came across this morning on MediaPost that provides some insights:
- We know that tweens and teens spend the majority of their free time (and even some of their class time) surfing the Internet. Where they’re spending that surf time, however, seems to be a big mystery. Well, wonder no more. Teens and tweens are drawn to Web sites that engage them on multiple interactive platforms, hold their ever-shrinking attention span, and give them a reason to come back.
Read the full list of sites and comments in the article titled Buzz Focus: Surf’s Up at These Hot Sites – A QUICK GUIDE TO WHERE teens and tweens are pointing and clicking
“We know that tweens and teens spend the majority of their free time (and even some of their class time) surfing the Internet.”
This seems unlikely to me – unless this includes chatting and discussion through web sites. I believe the urge to take part is too great for most to simply surf.
Which makes this statement equally unlikely:
“hold their ever-shrinking attention span”
Unless he means their ‘boredom-span’, the capability to carry on listening/viewing despite being bored, required behaviour in a more institution-focussed age and perhaps less important in a modern learner-centred pedagogy?
Personally I had never heard of, nor have I witnessed “tweens and teens” in Aust or NZ looking at these sites.
In a very interesting conversation with an IT dude at my place of work, he asked me: “what website do you think is THE most visited site at our institution..” knowing it wasn’t what I thought it might be like Google say, I prompted him and he said TradeMe! (NZ equal to eBay).
My instant response was that we should start selling courses on TradeMe.
It would be very interesting a survey from all the IT departments in schools, teks and unis around NZ to get a picture of the most viewed sites in their organisations.