"If my Gran got hold of a computer, she could delete the internet," 16-year-old Paul Cruikshank, a fifth year pupil at St Thomas Aquinas, Glasgow, told panellists and audience at The Herald/Sunday Herald Shaping Scotland's Digital Future education debate.
In a lively discussion, younger members of the audience spoke of their frustration with the "older generation" and how they did not understand the tools of communication now being used by the so-called "Generation Y".
These "Digital Natives", who have grown up with the internet, should be valued and the skills they have used by businesses to improve their success, said the panel of 10 experts and students during the debate at the Science Centre in Glasgow last week.
"These digital natives, and we have many of them here today, have a very different outlook from the rest of the population," said Kirk Ramsay, chief executive officer of the Glasgow Science Centre, a former director of the Digi-tal Scotland Taskforce and Open Learning Foundation and who has developed a number of technology companies with operations in the UK, Europe and the United States.
"We don't have an issue with the people coming up through the schools," he said, adding that it was the management that needed to learn about the technology and those who use it. "We need to let the lunatics take over the asylum."
He quoted Laura Palmer Noone, in her testimony to the web-based Education Commission, USA, in July 2000, when she was presi- dent of the University of Phoenix.
"If we are to be required to assess educational quality and learning by virtue of how long a student sits in a seat, we have focused on the wrong end of the student."
He later added: "Although said over eight years ago, her quote still holds currency and I suspect will for a long time to come given the glacial pace that digital immigrants' react to the changed population that are digital natives'.
"We do need to change our thinking radically if we are to support our young population in the way they deserve so that they can perform at the level the rest of us need them to."
Ramsay said there was a need to move from the Cartesian model of "I think therefore I am" (Cogito, ergo sum) to "we collaborate therefore we are", adding that this collaborative approach that had been brought about by the internet, of sharing ideas and information, was the biggest revolution that was hardest to understand in different generations.
"They are adding one plus one and making more than two," he added, saying that the Facebook/Bebo culture was part of this and needed to be brought into the classroom.
And what now needed to happen was to combine new technology with old tech- nology - to combine high and low tech - to make new companies for the future.
Raymond O'Hare, regional director of Microsoft Scotland, said that in the coal industry in Scotland there was desperate need to attract young talent.
"This Generation Y, which were born after 1980, are the first generation that has entered the workplace completely au fait with technology," said O'Hare.
"It is a tremendous resource that we should tap into. Every company should have at least one person with these skills."
O'Hare added the amount of digital information was currently doubling every two years and that by 2010 it was estimated it would be doubling every 72 hours.
What the education system needed to do was help people understand how to use this knowledge and learn how to harness the great abilities of this new generation.
"We look to our educators in how to shape that," he added.
Paul Holmes, a student taking part in Microsoft's internship programme, told the audience of how he had taken a year's internship at Microsoft after two years at Glasgow University to get some "real-world experience".
He criticised the education system for being so linear and for compart- mentalising subjects so rigidly in the curriculum.
Holmes posed the question to the audience, who were mainly made up of students and schoolchildren: "How do you teach the ability to learn? How do you teach teachers a subject which is perpetually changing? How do you teach people to deal with change?"
He also said that collaboration was "key". "If information is locked in one person's head, that is one thing. But if you can share that information, it is a real boon to business."
Holmes added that while schools needed to be the starting point of encouraging change, it was business that had to be encouraged to accept change."
The event was hosted by The Herald and Sunday Herald, in partnership with Microsoft, and focused on education. The main themes of the day were how best to inculcate IT skills and entrepreneurship in young people, and its potential positive impact on Scottish businesses.
The morning event was hosted by Sunday Herald business editor Colin Donald. Panel members also included young entrepreneurs such as Gylen Boardman, joint managing director of Coriolis Media, Joe Wilson, business manager at SQA, David Kelly, managing director of The David Kelly Design Office, Iain Lowson of HMIE, Gregor Urquhart, communications director of Young Scot, and pupils from Taylor High School, New Stevenson in Lanarkshire.
