App Generation by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis

I tried a couple of times to read The App Generation and to grapple with the points that Gardner and Davis were making. However, I struggled with the text – perhaps because I had high expectations due to Gardner’s involvement.  To me, it was overly critical of today’s youth (as they admit themselves on page 166), calling them "risk adverse, dependent and superficial." I most objected to the way in which they seemed to stereotype kids and how they would use apps.

I wish instead of whining about the use of technology that the authors had taken a less academic and more celebratory tone.   For example, on page 171 they note the "many young people lament the absence of effective mentors," but did not really fill that role themselves.  I was surprised to not see more comments about the growth of entrepreneurial studies like the Institute of Design at Stanford and other universities – just this week Georgetown announced a new cross-disciplinary innovation hub.  

It was near the end of the book (pages 180 and 181) that they explicitly noted two “features newly enabled by the new media.” Specifically, the authors note "the chance to initiate and fashion one’s own products…" and "the capacity to make use of diverse forms of understanding…." I do wish they could have seen the pride in the eyes and body language of several Special Education students with whom I work as they completed their projects on Brain Research, using Smore.com to summarize their findings and as a guide for their subsequent classroom presentations.  Many more links and examples of recent student work would have made for a stronger argument and a MUCH more engaging read.

Ironically, I found it especially hard to read in The App Generation in digital form.  It is the kind of book I would like to leaf through, paging back and forth between the footnotes and the text. I will spend time investigating Project New Media Literacies, but certainly the authors could have easily created an appendix with suggestions for tools to explore as "today’s youth navigate identity, intimacy and imagination in a digital world."