Celia Hannon
Senior Researcher
Celia Hannon joined Demos as a researcher in 2005. Her research interests include gender, childhood, new media and public space.
at 4:26pm on Wednesday, 30th August 2006
The more we find about young people's changing relationship with digital media the more questions this raises about their future as students and employees. Just as some schools find it difficult to capitalise on the creative and technological skills of many of their pupils, so organisations risk overlooking the new skills of young graduates. As the recent Demos publication Working Progress demonstrated, employers think new graduates are arriving without with the skills needed to navigate the workplace. Could part of the problem be that they are looking for the wrong type of skills? According to the American author Marc Prensky young people are entering the workplace armed with an array of new skills such as parallel processing, random accessing (hyperlinking) and the ability to operate at what he calls 'twtich speed'. How could schools and organisations capitalise on these and young people's enhanced media literacy? Some are starting to - job adverts for the creative sectors are already appearing with requests for online evidence of applicants' work or skills. A kind of Myspace CV. Some American Universities are now offering dedicated e-portofolio services for their graduates so that they can showcase their work to the public or employers. Schools may want to start exploring similar options if they want to bridge the gaps between informal learning, school and worklife.
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