May 18, 2008

Who is technologically plugged in at your school?  What student?  What teacher?  Which administrator?  Whose parents are most wired?

In a recent Al’s Morning Meeting column, Poynter’s Al Tompkins wrote about a new Scarborough Research report (PDF) that lists Austin, Texas, as the nation’s most “tech-savvy” city.

 
Twelve percent of Austin adults are
Digital Savvy, and they are almost twice as likely as the national
average to be in this leading edge consumer segment. Las Vegas,
Sacramento and San Diego are also leading Digital Savvy cities, with 10
percent of their residents having this higher level of technological
orientation and adoption.
 
The list looks like this:
  • Austin
  • Las Vegas
  • Sacramento
  • San Diego
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Seattle
  • Phoenix
  • Chicago
  • New York
  • San Francisco

Tompkins quotes the research, which says digital savvy folks are baseball lovers, they buy a lot of
electronics at Costco, and they are likely to be in business for
themselves. They are heavy e-mail users and online bill payers
who use the Internet to get news/weather/movie listings. They frequent
online radio, half of them spend at least $500 a year on online
purchases, and they are heavy users of ESPN.com and NFL.com, Tompkins writes.

If you live in one of those 10 cities, you have special reason to cover this story.  But even if you don’t, find the digitally savvy people in your school community and write about them. How are their lives different?

— Wendy Wallace
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Wendy Wallace is the primary grant writer for Poynter and focuses on the stewardship of the foundations and individuals who support our work. She was…
Wendy Wallace

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