Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

Marc Prensky's idea of digital natives and digital immigrants is fascinating. According to Prensky, digital natives are those who have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using technology-from video games, to TVs, to Internet, to cell phones. Digital Immigrants, he says, are those who were not born into the digital world. Our family got our first computer when I turned 12 but we were one of the few families among my friends that had one.

After reading his articles on the topic ( here & here), I determined that I'm a Digital Native because I grew up surrounded by technology. However, I have some characteristics of a Digital Immigrant, at times, too. I print out all readings from my courses, unless they are over 25 pages. I also print papers and edit to edit it rather than just editing it on the screen. 

I felt very frustrated at the beginning of this online course because almost everything was new to me. I was forced to challenge myself into new technologies that I'd never used before and honestly had very little interest or enthusiasm to do so. However, as time has gone by, I've realized how this digital immigrant in me needs to change for the benefit of my future students. After all, they will need me to incorporate technology into my teaching.

I think part of my frustration with this course was the fact that I didn't know how to use many of the new technology that was introduced. And I think this goes along with not being able to "keep up" with technology. I feel it all moves so fast and you blink your eyes and something new has come out. 

  I am 31 and took quite a few years between my bachelors and my master programs. when i started my master program, I had no idea was google docs was. I felt like I had taken a few years off and suddenly was so far "behind" everyone else in terms of technology.

I disagree that Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants is a generational thing. Instead, I believe it depends on the person. I know plenty of people my parents age who don't have a digital immigrant "accent." I also know a few people my age, in my social group, who don't have a computer or even a smart phone for that matter. 

I completely agree with this PBS Video that says that computers are a privilege that not everyone has access too. People from low-income families who grew up the same time that I grew up do not know how to use much of the technology that I do. And I do not consider myself to be "tech savvy" at all.

Epals: Where Learners Connect

Epals is a great resource for educators who are looking for project based lesson plan ideas. After browsing through some of the projects on this site, I'm pretty impressed. Many of the science projects that I looked at have students outside collecting various information and then recording it and comparing it to other students' data collection around the world.

I tried to find a simple projects for my students and the topic I chose was weather. There is a project for younger grades that my adult students would be able to do. My students are adult refugees who are learning the very basics of computer and internet skills. This project has students first reading maps to find cities, finding the city's temperature on the internet, and looking at the climate data for that city. They have to decide what the difference is between weather and climate. They also look at the map and compare and contrast different cities.

One of the features of this site that I love is the Educational Resources page, especially Ask an Expert.  I recently did a unit on the Solar System and we could have used this page when questions came up. It's a fun feature and I can totally see my students loving this!

Connectivism through Social Networking: Educator's PLN

The Networked Teacher:

Keeping up with technology is nearly impossible but one way to keep up is to establish a network with other teachers and to explore new technology as much as possible because it changes so often.

It is impossible to know all the answers so it's a great idea for a teacher to network with colleagues to learn from them.

The Educator's PLN is a great social networking site to connect with other teachers. I teach ESL and after a quick search on this site, I found dozens of blogs with teaching tips, lessons, and resources for ESL teachers.

This site can be useful for me if I'm in need of resources on a topic or if I'm struggling with something in the classroom then I can turn to my network for advice. Keeping up with the blogs on this site will help me to get new ideas or to learn from other teachers. This site is great and I encourage you to take a look!

Module 3: Technology and Motivation

As a person who has deleted social media accounts and is currently trying not to constantly be on my cell phone and computer, I am also trying to be a better teacher. This course is surprising me and opening my mind to the great things technology can bring to our lives and can bring to our classroom.

I recently watched  a few videos about technology and the importance of technology in education. Future Learning is a mini documentary about how to engage students for the technologically-advanced future that they will face. Education innovators like Dr. Sugata Mitra, Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy; and Dr. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, share their views on technology and education and some of the things they shared, quick frankly, blew my mind.

Dr. Sugata Mitra mentioned a good point when he discussed that old educational modals were developed as military education, while Sal Khan says that old educational modals where students do drills and a teacher talks at them was a way to make people submissive. Today, however, we must prepare students for their future and their future will be a world that revolves around technology.

I think about my childhood without a computer and without the internet and compare it to today's children who grow up with technology in their hand the moment they're able to hold objects and I realize, yes, this is indeed their future. For me it's a bit of a sad realization that today's children will grow up so vastly different that I did. However, this documentary opened my mind to how we can use technology for educational purposes and I felt a bit of relief when I saw how truly engaged young learners are when they are learning via video games, iPads, and the internet.

I loved Sugata Mitra's experiment where he put computers in the slums in India. These were places where children had no idea what the internet was and had never seen a computer. However, he discovered that children in groups can teach themselves how to use a computer. He later said that learning is limitless when you remove the teacher, give children the ability to interact with each other and give them the internet. For me this was a powerful piece of the documentary. Children are motivated by technology and they can learn from technology and from working with each other.

Another important point and probably more relevant to my teaching was what Catherine Lucy, Vice Dean of Education at UCSF, said regarding adult education and technology. She said that adults learn something when they have a reason to learn it. Medical students at UCSF can learn anatomy from an application that puts it into real life perspective for them. As a teacher of ESL adult education, I thought about the ways that my students will need to use the internet for everyday life in the U.S. Many of my students are looking for jobs and many applications are online. They are all so eager to work and support their families. They know they need basic computer skills and have all recently enrolled in a course to learn how to use a computer. Something I can do to help them will be to bring them to the computer lab and practice searching for jobs and doing online practice job applications. I know they will be motivated by this because they are motivated to find work and provide for their families. This a a simple and basic way I can bring technology into my classroom that is relevant to my students' everyday lives.

Another video that I watched was Social Media Revolution. I purposefully chose to watch this because I over the past few years I see friends and family members addicted to social media and I have begun to hate social media because of it. So, I watched this video and learned about the impact of social media on our world. What I learned was that no matter what I do, social media is impacting the world so much that it's hard to live without. In regards to education, the thing that surprised me the most was that generations Y and Z consider email old technology and that some universities have even stopped giving email addresses! Yes...this was a wake up call for me, a previous self-proclaimed hater-of-technology...I need to wake up and realize my students need me to jump on the technology train!

At the end of the day what I gathered about my new views of technology was this:

Even though I hate certain aspects of technology (like people constantly on their phones and on social media) I can appreciate what technology can do in a classroom and I realized how technology is a great motivational tool for students of all ages.

Technology can be a great tool for educators and students. Our lives are centered around technology and in the future we won't be able to do some of the things we do now without technology. So, it is our duty as educators to bring technology into our classroom. Technology is quite fun in the classroom! When students are having fun, they are motivated and learn.