Gen Y Observation

It's very interesting to read Pak Aspiandi's report of the Gen Y Observation in the area where he teaches. Then it triggers me to also report the observation I did to some students who regularly utilize the technology provided by my husband's cyber cafe. 

Instead of observing in a classroom, why did I do the observation in cyber cafe? The main reason is because recently I don't have any class like almost all my friends do. Aha yes, I am a full-time S2Vacation student haha :P Anyway, I also chose to observe in cyber cafe because I believe that this place is representative and has what Reily (2012) categorizes as Generation Y. Every day, there are at least 5 to 6 students browse and play online games in my husband cyber cafe. Then I become more convinced to observe them.

Actually I have already observed the Gen Y who utilize the technology in the cyber cafe even since before I took the vacation class. Many interesting phenomena happened when I sat and observed what they did. Mainly, they are really noisy talking with their neighbor-friend, discussing about the strategy of the online games they were doing. However, I list this kind of behavior as 'team-oriented'. When playing the games, they thought they must cooperate to reach the mission of the games. Although they actually can coordinated online with their friends, they prefer to do it directly when they can see their 'partner in crime' face to face.

Besides playing online games, other kind of students who use the service of the cyber cafe also utilize the internet to browse some articles in order to fulfill their school assignment. Sometimes, they do not do the task on their own in front of the computer in the cyber cafe cubicle. They prefer to request to the operator to find articles related to the assignment and copy-paste them to Microsoft Word to then be printed and written their name in the cover as if they write the article.. I categorize this habit as a dishonest behavior.  

Another behavior which was captured on my observation is wasteful. I don't know whether this judgement is an objective or subjective one, but in my opinion, students today are too loyal with their parents' money. They easily bought the online games voucher or bought a new device such as smartphone (I know this because they show it off to their friends in the cyber cafe). Or is it kind of trend among the Gen Y to always be update for having the latest gadget? If it is, then I am not a full-time Gen Y :P

Last but not least, the students whom I observed are really easily grumpy every time the electricity was off or the internet connection was lagging when they were still doing the browsing or playing online games. Most of them behaved impatiently waiting to utilize the internet again. It seemed that they are "mati gaya" without the internet connection hehehe.

However, besides those bad sides of behavior, the students also are technology enthusiasts, creative, and smarter. Those who play online games know more vocabulary than their friends who do not, or their friends who play online games but the language used in the games is Bahasa Indonesia. It proved that actually the internet, i.e online games, also can be a good media for the students to learn English.

I hope my observation will give a contribution even if it's just a little :)