Posts Tagged ‘anorexia’
Digital Natives vs Leaving Cert Paper
The Leaving Cert Paper is Ireland’s paper based final examination in second level education. On Wednesday, 30 pupils saw the following day’s paper for less than 1 minute due to a very unfortunate error. By the power of social networking, the majority of students in the country had vital information on an upcoming exam by 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The word got to the Department of Education by 4 o’clock and they had to postpone the exam. This caused a logistical nightmare for getting thousands of new exam papers out.
Ireland’s 18 year olds are digital natives, they turn to the mobile phone and social networking when they want to communicate so it was a very simple exercise in viral dissemination of information. In contrast, the Department of Education is paper based so it caused a logistical nightmare for them.
It proves to me that the pace of expansion of social networking in healthcare will be driven by digital natives not by changes in government policy. Health Services need to embrace social networking for dealing with all sorts of issues which affect young people such as depression, anorexia, epilepsy, drug addiction and sexual harrassment.
The bebo generation is here and on a mobile phone near you!
