Marilyn R. Pukkila posted in the ACRLBlog, seeing what I see every day, Millenials who've never heard of Podcasts, Blogs, MySpace, BitTorrent and the like. Take that Stephen Abram!

Quoted:
"Our college now podcasts shows intended to convey to students information about the campus, its people, and its major events. I was wondering how we could work in a story about the libraries, and mentioned this to a group of students at dinner one night. They replied, “What’s a podcast?”

Out of two first years, three sophomores, and a junior, only one of them had heard of podcasting, and only because their parents used it.

We had a library pizza lunch for members of our student government, the campus movers and shakers. I mentioned podcasting to three of them, and was met with blank stares. I then launched into an explanation of Second Life, and the ways some librarians were exploring it for instruction possibilities. Their response? “Why would anyone want to spend time with that?”

So just who is it that’s driving all this social computing, anyway? I may be asking a small pool of users, but it’s MY pool. If they don’t know anything about these technologies, and if they feel that librarians in MySpace or Facebook are peering through the open curtains of their (perceived) student-only spaces, then why would I want to spend all the time it would take for me to become fluent in them? Is it to get ready for their younger siblings (according to the Pew study)? Or would I be better off spending the time asking students how THEY want to receive information from me?"

There's alot of hype out there, I'm not seeing it. Yes more and more students are using laptops with wireless internet, IM'g all the time and know about Youtube. BUt they work jobs, commute from far, many don't have 8 hours a day to play around social networking. You kknow what I see in the classroom, those that fit the sterotypical Millenial, the tech immersed, do the least well in courses, because, well, they're playing instead of working.