I graduated from high school in 1983... there were four computers in my high school for students to use. In college I bought my first computer (I paid extra for the upgrade to 128 kb of memory-- cost me more than $2000-- I remember my high school chemistry teacher telling similar stories about the amount of money he spent on his first pocket calculator!)
My older son graduated from high school in 2009... my younger son should graduate in 2013. They carry cell phones with more processing power than the computers I was buying about 10 years ago. They have never known a world without computers, the Internet, and cell phones.
The brains of these young people have been affected by this access to technology. They expect different things of schools than those who are over about 30. (In less than 10 years, the children of these digital natives will be in school... if you are in the first half of your career and expect a career measured in decades, get ready to change!)
A variety of names have been given to the generation(s) that have lived forever in the digital world; I will use Net Geners-- the Internet Generation(s). Much has ben written about these individuals, two of the important books are:
Born Digital
John Palfrey and Urs Gasser describe the issues that have changed for the Net Geners:
Rewired
