Perception towards Generation Differences: Old Generation and New Generation

"Change is one of  the ever constant thing in this world, change in belief, change in perspectives, change in the way of living and change in everything."

Before I start describing my perceptions about the two generation, I should first give my a clear definition as to what do we really mean when we say "GENERATION"?

GENERATION

- it refers to the group of individual who are present in a specific period of time. Generation in this sense of birth cohort, also known as a "social generation", is widely used in popular culture, and has been the basis for societal analysis. Serious analysis of generations began in the nineteenth century, emerging from an increasing awareness of the possibility of permanent social change and the idea of youthful rebellion against the established social order. Some analysts believe that a generation is one of the fundamental social categories in a society, while others view its importance as being overshadowed by other factors such as class, gender, race, education, and so on.

So, let's now have my perception about old and the new generation.

OLD GENERATION

We can consider a person belonging to the older generation if an individual was born on the past 30 years from our birth or an individual who belongs to the Veterans Generation, and Baby Boomers Generation. Most of the persons belonging to the older generation seems to be unfamiliar with the latest gadgets and newest technological advancement and breakthroughs happening in the society. Most of them are used to live in a very simple life following the natural essence of living and all of their works are not so influenced by this so called "TECHNOLOGY". Most of them are the ones who keep on advising their children to be like them on who they are way back on their times. They are used to do things that relies to their abilities and not on the technology. They are people who live in the older norms, standards and mores.

NEW GENERATION

The generation where the bloom of technology was very evident, through the highly-sophisticated gadgets and applications starting from mobile cellphones, telephones, to the computer, television, to the laptops, iPod, iPad going to the summit of the formation of the Wireless Fidelity System. An individual is considered as a product of new generation when, they belong to the individuals ranging from Generation Y to the present Generation Z, or individuals belonging to the Millenials. People in this generation are granted with a more comfortable and efficient living through the use of machineries that are product of technology. They are individuals who wants to do things that are related to the use of technology. An example would be in an academic setting, the present students are interested in subjects when it involves the use of technology or they could be able to engage in an activity involving the things that captures the students' interests. In paradox, individuals belonging to this generation are so dependent on technology therefore making them very lazy in such manner that they want everything to be "INSTANT".

To give a glimpse of the many differences of  Old and New Generation here's a video showing it:

The difference between Past 30 years generation from the New Digital Generation

	Way of Socialization	Way of Communication	Way of Dressing	Way of Accessing Information	Way of Teaching
Past 30 Years Generation	-The way of socializing is through attending fiestas, “bayle”, or the old way of dancing with others publicly. Socializing is limited to people who can attend the bayle or fiestas.	-The ways of communication are through telegrams, telegraphs or through mailing that takes much time before one can receive the message.	-In the old times, woman are ought to dress as long as they could to protect their dignity and avoid issues, and men are wearing “barong”, to show their dignity. Both of the gender are conservative in nature.	-In the context of information access in the old generation, all the information is limited in paper works such as books, newspaper, flyers, etc.	-The teachers in the past 30 years impose the traditional method in the teaching process, where student’s role is just to listen to the teacher’s lecture. Teachers follows the philosophy of Essentialism where the teacher is the sole source of information, focuses on the development of basic knowledge.
New Digital Generation	-In the new generation, the creations of facebook, twitter, multiply and other social networking sites pave the way of creating a new medium of socializing others around the globe.	-Through the invention of sophisticated gadgets such as telephone and mobile phones, the way of exchanging messages becomes more handy and the messages passed could be received in a split seconds through texting or calling.	-In the new generation, women wear short skirts, and other sexy outfits to show their pride of being a woman, while men wear ragged jeans, polo shirts, t-shirts and others to show that they’re handsome and for fashion purposes.	-Google, Yahoo search, Firefox and other softwares created to provide limitless virtual information, providing all the information that you want to know around the world.	-The contemporary teachers employ a freer atmosphere in learning where the teacher serves as a guide in the learning process of the students. They integrate ICT in the learning process and follow the philosophy of constructivism where it stresses out the effectiveness of “learning by doing”.

To add more details regarding the difference between the two generation, you may watch this video:

Bridging the Gaps of Generation Y and Generation Z

“Connecting lives through teachers.” A quote made by myself upon pondering the things about bridging the gaps in education.

One of the most inevitable things that will happen in this world is the thing called change, and upon that circumstance is the formation of gaps from one generation to another. Newly formed standards in the society, new information from the new generation, new beliefs and norms and other societal, environmental and technological changes create a gap that should be bridged for better understanding. To fill in the gaps created by generational advancement, we need instruments to serve as the bridge to communicate and relate the past and the present generation.

                In the educational setting, the one that serves as the instrument for the linking of the two generations is the teacher. To bridge the generation y students to the generation z students as well as bridging the generational gaps of the teacher to his generation y and z students. As for me, I could eliminate the gaps between generations by practicing to be a digital immigrant to their generation so that even when I belong to the different generation I could still relate them by knowing their lifestyles as well their interests in different field of knowledge. Digital immigrant means that a person is trying to cope up to the current trends that are overt in the present generation.  A digital immigrant is people who do not know the full feature of a specific era, so it’ll be upon the students from specific generation to tell about everything regarding to the life they are raised, an exchange of thoughts will be evident in the classroom. In that manner, students could understand the situation of each of them and try to help one another cope up into the present.

                In teaching, it requires a teacher to be more innovative and eclectic so they could capture and maintain student’s attention, and one thing is that a teacher should know the different interest of the students as well as their capabilities so that a teacher could think of the best activity that he or she would employ in the classroom.

                We are now currently at the era of technological breakthroughs and it entails the wide use of technology in different aspects of societal factors, including education. Using technology in the everyday encounter in teaching connotes a big improvement in the field of teaching because unlike the obsolete way of teaching, it involves the technology that every student encounters every day.

                The children of generation y and z grow differently in terms of beliefs, norms and standards as well as to the technological advancement, so teachers are responsible to patch the gaps present between the students, but before a teacher can do that, a teacher must know how adjust for himself for the sake of his or her students, even if it may be very taxing to do it, but teachers are their second parents, and a parent only wants the best for their children.

To further, understand my points here's a video explaining it in a workforce context:

My Reflection in Teaching Generation Z Students

"Teaching is an art of coping up with students' needs and provide them better a experience." As time flows by, the level of our society also increases including the quality of living the citizens has also been improved. Together with all the improvement is the altering of peoples' vision towards learning. It may be caused by the rapid changing of interest of individuals specially people currently living and the ones who were born during this times are captured by the current technological breakthroughs in this times and because of this they prefer to engage themselves on things involving technology.

It’s like everything lies upon the hands of technology and eventually it would just goes to show that technology replaces the duty of a teacher. I have asked myself, do I want that incident to happen? If the old way of teaching would be kept up to this time, then that would really going to happen specially when handling students who were born in the 21st century or the people belonging to Generation Z. So, I reflected about teaching as to how to handle Generation Z students and I realized that even as to how good the teacher is, if he’s applying a traditional way of teaching then it is expected to students to just simply hear everything what the teacher says, whereas if the teacher deliver the lessons in accordance to how students live, the class would be more interactive and lively.  

I realized that I should cope-up with the students with the latest ideas, newest educational sites, and trending educational applications and even to the hottest gadget so that I could share something new to my students and so that the topic would be much more interesting. I realized that as a teacher belonging to Generation Y, I should understand the needs of the students belonging to Generation Z by learning the new ways in teaching with the integration of technology for an efficient learning. I realized that technology is just a mere tool in delivering a quality education, and we, teachers should not be the tool of technology.
The true essence of teaching deals not merely on teachers but most important thing is to deal with the learners. The smiles and contentment of the students that we can see in our students’ faces is much sweeter accomplishment than anything else.