The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World Hardcover
Author: Visit Amazon's Howard Gardner Page - ISBN: 0300196210 - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB
DESCRIPTION
Review
"An ambitious and admirable project. . . . Meticulously researched and thoughtful."—New York Times Book Review
(New York Times Book Review)"Elevates the discussion beyond knee-jerk complaints about 'those #@#!! kids who are on their phones all day'."—Mindful Magazine
(Mindful Magazine)"[The App Generation] possesses an interesting insight. ‘Young people growing up in our time are not only immersed in apps, . . . they’ve come to think of the world as an ensemble of apps, to see their lives as a string of ordered apps, or perhaps, in many cases, a single, extended, cradle-to-grave app.’”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
(Dwight Garner New York Times)“Provocative . . . Provides useful frameworks for future research.”—Publishers Weekly
(Publishers Weekly)“[A] necessary book.”—Roger Lewis, Daily Mail (Roger Lewis Daily Mail 2014-02-14)
"Gardner and Davis have offered a challenging and thought-provoking book: particularly rewarding for educators who are interested in thinking about how young people are changing, and how we might preserve the best practices of our profession while adapting the tools that define a generation."—Education Week's EdTech Researcher
(Education Week's EdTech Researcher)“Here we have a serious consideration that a generation has grown up with an emotional aesthetic as instrumental as their technology. That is, this generation approaches intimacy, identity, and imagination through the prism of the apps that have surrounded them. Gardner and Davis further consider the proposition that ’What can’t be an app doesn’t matter.’ But the authors do more than this. They approach their subject in a constructive spirit, providing analytical tools to distinguish among apps, the ones that will stifle and the ones that will nurture. In the end, they see a way forward: We are responsible, individually and in our communities and families to use technology in ways that open up the world rather that close it down. The App Generation is not anti-technology; it simply puts technology in its place.”—Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
(Sherry Turkle)“The App Generation deals with a crucial issue for our future, and it is a pioneering and prophetic work in its genre.”—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)“This book is must reading for parents, teachers and policy makers. It presents a portrait of today’s young people, not in terms of the traditional historical events of their lives, but instead the digital technology that shaped this generation. It compellingly and powerfully examines the impact, consequences, and implications for their and society’s future.”—Arthur Levine, President of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation & former President of Teachers College, Columbia University
(Arthur Levine)"This compelling book explores what it's like to be 'app-dependent' and what life was like before the power of apps on our society. Howard Gardner, the renowned father of the multiple intelligence theory, along with co-writer Kate Davis, offers readers an in-depth look at the benefits and drawbacks of apps, and how the power of these apps can lead to greater creativity. "—Top Books for Educators,About.com
(Top Books for Educators, About.com)“Many of the observations. . .are illuminated with careful thought and research [and] offer a readable and intelligent summary of where we are today.”—Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times (Josh Glancy The Sunday Times 2014-01-26)
“Gardner is a renowned psychologist who has long decried box-ticking behaviourist approaches to education.. . .he and Davis. . .build a strong case that a dependency on apps is having a reductive effect on young people.” —Gautam Malkani, The Financial Times
(Gautam Malkani The Financial Times 2014-03-01)‘[I]n the process of setting out their findings, they raise important questions: what is what they’re calling “the app generation” – the young people who have never lived without the internet, without smartphones – actually like?’—Jacob Mikanowski, Prospect Magazine (Jacob Mikanowski Prospect Magazine 2014-04-24)
From the Author
A conversation with Howard Gardner and Katie Davis . . .
Q: Have digital media shifted the way we form and maintain personal relationships?
A: Social media have made it incredibly easy to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances. But there is considerable concern that the effort we put into maintaining our weaker social ties may crowd out the sustained attention needed to nurture deeper relationships. Even so, our research suggests that most of today’s young people seek traditional qualities in their online relationships: empathy, trust, reciprocity, and self-disclosure.
Q: How can we help young people to use apps positively?
A: Parents and teachers can encourage imaginative exploration, beyond the letter of the app. But part of the burden also falls on those who devise apps. Too many educational apps are just digital versions of "drill-and-kill." We need apps that open up new possibilities and then allow the user to explore, imagine, expand, and, on occasion, toss aside the digital device and “go it alone.”
Q: How does an older person, a nondigital native, recognize the harmful uses of digital technology?
A: We would be concerned if any young person spent too much time in the digital world, at the cost of face-to-face contact or time to relax, reflect, rest. And of course, one has to be on the lookout for frankly damaging behavior—bullying, invasion of another’s privacy, sexting, and so on. But by the time a child is 12 or 16, adults have difficulty knowing, let alone controlling, what the young person does. That is why both co-exploration when the child is young and learning enough so that you are not completely a digital immigrant are very important for adults of any generation.
See all Editorial Reviews
DETAILS
- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (October 22, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0300196210
- ISBN-13: 978-0300196214
- Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #38 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Children's Studies
- #70 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Internet, Groupware, & Telecommunications
- #88 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Child Psychology
REVIEWS
In a bygone era, parents and teachers provided the lessons and kids responded. With today's app generation, parents and teachers must take an entirely different approach. They are the ones who must respond, because electronic media have completely changed the locus and flow of information.
Does this book provide a recipe for what that response should be? No, but it does provide valuable insight into dealing with the app generation.
Typically, a book addressing social issues has an agenda. The drawback there, of course, is the book is intended to be a proof of a thesis rather than an open-minded exploration of the issue. The former can easily be a blind leading the blind situation, and that's why an agenda-less book like this one is so valuable.
However, the drawback of the agenda-less book is the reader isn't likely to walk away with a "correct answer" sort of conclusion. But if you need such a conclusion, you probably aren't ready to examine social issues because seldom do such simple conclusions reflect the complex reality. Things are more nuanced and layered than such conclusions permit.
This book didn't hit us with dire warnings that apps are turning kids into zombies. Nor did it herald a new age, in which app-enabled kids will run circles around their app-avoiding parents.
What the authors did was look at how different generations view the mobile app technology. They looked closely at the changes between the generations. It's a complex mosaic, and in that mosaic we find both good and bad effects. They provided some analysis of this also, without going very far down the opinion road.
If a reader can sense any personal opinion in this book, it's basically along the lines of "We want to look at both sides.
PREVIEW
The App Generation DOWNLOAD
No comments:
Post a Comment