The two part talk by Nishant Shah explores the location of the Digital Natives in classrooms in higher education. As increasingly, the forms of information access and dissemination change, young students in
classrooms are also developing newer forms of learning and education practices. The first session explores the possibilities and potentials of these new technologised conditions of learning, looking at popular spaces of cyberspatial engagement like social networking systems, peer 2 peer networks etc. The second part of the talk posits that the digital natives are not only a part of the changing academic and classroom practices but are also reconfiguring the notions of political engagement and social transformation. Focusing on digital objects which are otherwise relegated to the realms of ‘merely cultural’ or ‘trivial’, the talk explores the changing nature of the public and the political and the way the young users of technology are changing the world we live in.

Nishant Shah (Director - Research) has done his Ph.D. doctoral work from the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. He has worked diversely as an information architect with companies as diverse as Yahoo, Partecs, and Khoj Studios, looking at questions of digital communities, identities and cultural productions online. He was a Research Analyst for Comat Technologies, working on issues of e-governance, design and accessibility. Nishant has designed and taught several courses and workshops on the aesthetics and Politics of New Digital Media, for undergraduate and graduate level students from various reputed academic institutions like Christ College (Bangalore), CSCS (Bangalore), St. Joseph’s College (Bangalore), Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), Women’s Studies Centre (Pune University), University of Tempare (Finland), Washington University (Seattle), and New School (New York). He has presented his work in various international and national conferences and workshops, and has published in peer-reviewed academic journals. like the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and the European Journal of English Studies. In 2006-2007, he was invited as a visiting scholar at the National Central University, Taiwan, where he bolstered his interests in comparative work across Asia. A recipient of research grant from the Asia Scholarship Foundation (2008-2009), Nishant’s further research attempts a comparative study of Information Society in India and other developing Asian countries. His other interests are in areas of creative translation, mechanics of writing, and gender and sexuality.