Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Digital Asylum-seekers: The Clash of Cultures

22-24 June 2010 - Sibiu, Romania

an international conference hosted by a consortium of eight institutions, including University of Bucharest, University of Ankara, Free University Brussels, and Polytechnical Institute of Porto - running DIGITAS, a Grundtvig Multilateral Partnership (2008 – 2010)

Digital media and the internet have transformed the way young people learn, play, socialize, and even participate in civic life. Children today have access to media, be it through their computers, mobile phones or mp3 players, much more readily than their parents ever could. Consequently, digital technologies facilitate young people's creation of media environments and associated literacy practices that their parents find particularly difficult to perceive or understand, and from which they are effectively excluded.

Such media environments and their respective specific literacy practices are fundamental for mapping a ‘digital divide’ operating along inter-generational lines. For some time, researchers and practitioners alike have shown that ‘ICT training’ of (older) adults, focusing exclusively on the use of various ICT tools, both hardware and software, is ultimately pointless in the absence of an adequate cultural orientation to such new territories – worth exploring, exotic as they may seem, but also fraught with unimaginable dangers.

We therefore invite contributions from educators and researchers from all scientific areas that describe, document, and analyse various forms of engagement, in inter-generational contexts and family settings, of youth and (older) adults with digital/online environments and how they relate to various forms of social and cultural capital. We are also looking forward to accounts of challenges and obstacles which encourage or inhibit engagement to various digital/online environments and their specific cultures, as well as of successful intervention strategies and pedagogical processes enabling (older) adults to exploit the opportunities for learning, playing, socializing, and participating supported by digital media.

We are looking forward to contributions submitted to one of the following sections:

* Learning in a digital world

* Playing in a digital world

* Socializing in a digital world

* Participating in a digital world