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.

Using Podcasts in the Classroom

Using podcasts in the classroom is a great resource for anyone who is learning a new language. Podcasts are audio files or video files that anyone can create on any topic they'd like. I use a Spanish podcast to keep up with my Spanish. I listen to conversations and grammar explanations and podcasts about travel, culture and cooking-all in Spanish. I've noticed I learn more when I'm listening to a podcast in Spanish about a subject  I love. I listen to "News in Slow Spanish" and another podcast for Spanish language learners about travel and culture. These are two topics that I love, so I always anticipate when the new podcast comes out. The more I listen, the more I learn! I want to encourage my ELL's to do the same with an ESL podcast in their free time.




I teach adult refugees and immigrants who have recently moved to the U.S.  For the first time, I started to browse some podcasts for ELLs and so far I've found ESL Pod. This podcast has some great episodes in American English. The topics are great for newly arrived immigrants. One lesson that I found here is about meeting a new neighbor. It is a dialogue between a person who is new to a neighborhood and another neighbor. They speak very slowly and this site also provides a transcript of the conversation, as well. In their conversation, they talk about being new to a neighborhood and how to be involved in a community. They use two word verbs and idioms in this dialogue. My students love to learn idioms and phrasal verbs. So I would use this podcast when teaching phrasal verbs. The topic is relevant, as well because it's about a new neighbor who is settling in to a new place-a perfect topic for newly arrived immigrants and refugees!

Phrasal Verbs used in this episode:

• settle in
• come over
• give you the scoop on..
• give you tips on...
• take a rain check
• stop by

I would pre-teach these phrasal verbs in this conversation and then give students a cloze activity where they would have to work in pairs to put these phrasal verbs into the correct sentence. Then, we would listen to the podcast and students would have the transcript in front of them and they could read it as they listen. I would then have the students work in pairs again and do the dialogue themselves. I would walk around and scaffold where necessary. After, I would ask a couple of pairs to read/act out the dialogue aloud.

Since I teach adult ELLs, I'm using the NYS Adult Ed goals for ESL. The two goals that I based this lesson on are:

Adult Goal 2: Learners will gain control of the system and structure of the English language.

Adult Goal 3: Learners will improve ability to understand spoken English.

Ted-Ed Lesson: History of Halloween

Holidays are always great fun to teach ELLs, especially Halloween! I created a Ted-Ed Lesson about Halloween. I used a short video from the History Channel that described a brief history of the holiday.  

My learning objectives were to teach students about American Holidays, specifically Halloween the origins of the holiday. Halloween can be big culture shock for new immigrants. They see people decorating their houses with pumpkins and scary things. They may see someone dressed up in a scary costume and think that this is an evil holiday. My goal in teaching the origins of Halloween was to teach  students where these scary traditions stem from and how they have carried on and morphed through many centuries. 

To be sure my learning objectives have been met, I may ask students to write a summary of the origins or make a timeline of Halloween based on the video. I would also encourage discussion after the Ted-Ed lesson to allow students to share their thoughts and ask questions and compare it to a holiday or custom in their country of origin. I would walk around and assess as students talk in pairs.

NYS Standards : 

ESL.I.5-8.5.1.2: Students will demonstrate a broad range of U.S. cultural and political referents through institutions, functions, and processes at the local and national levels and compare/contrast these with parallels in the students native community.

ESL.I.5-8.5.1.5: Students compare and contrast oral traditions, myths, folktales, and literature from the United States and international regions and cultures, including the students' own and identify similarities and differences and universal cultural themes.

Flipping the L2 Classroom

Flipped classrooms are genius! If you've never heard of a flipped classroom...here we go!

Flipped classrooms in a nutshell: Teachers post instructional videos online which allows students to watch them at home. Students can watch them as much as they want, pause or rewind as much as they want; they have control over their learning and go at their own pace. They can post questions to their classmates or to the teacher and when they get to class, they spend their time actually doing the work with differentiated instruction from the teacher!

Benefits of using a having a flipped L2 classroom:

According to Helaine Marshall,

• students have control of their learning
• more time for differentiation: the teacher has more time in the class to help struggling students and to challenge higher level students
• it's student centered: class time is spend collaborating with other students and interaction while learning a language is key!
• critical thinking increases because the flipped learning gives ELS a chance to participate at their own cognitive level

After learning about flipped classrooms I'm really convinced this is perfect for high schoolers and adults. I teach adult ELLS and I would absolutely love to try this in my classroom because I struggle a lot with differentiation. I have a few students who are very high and one or two who need extra help. A flipped classroom would solve all my problems! However, I don't know how I would be able to incorporate this in my classroom because my students are low-income students and they don't all have internet access at home. 

I wonder how popular a flipped classroom is? I really could have used a flipped classroom in high school. I needed extra help a lot in science and math and never spoke up because it seemed like everyone else "just got it" and I didn't. So, I really feel for my students who struggle.

My biggest question is, as a teacher with all low-income students who don't all have internet access at home, how do teachers do this if their students come from low-income families?

Twitter for Teachers & Students

Twitter for Professional Development

Twitter is a great way for teachers to share resources, see different perspectives from other teachers and to create a professional network.  Teachers create and post wonderful resources on Twitter so it is a great place to find resources and share resources with other teachers. Log into Twitter to find out what's working in other classrooms and give it a try! With twitter, you can log in and at your fingertips find solutions to problems you've had in the classroom. If you follow a Twitter chat, this gives you an opportunity to connect and ask and answer questions about a topic that you're interested in. This makes a more informed teacher. There are so many different teaching styles and Twitter is a great way to learn from other teachers.

resources: 15 Ways to Use Twitter In Education




How to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Twitter is not only great for professional development but it's a great way to motivate your students! I love the idea of taking notes on Twitter and sharing them on a class twitter page. When students collaborate in this way, they really help each other out. I also like the idea of using Twitter to post homework assignments or syllabus updates. Students have their phones in their hands every chance they get, so this is a good way for the class to be connected and always know what's going on. I teach ESL so I like the idea of posting videos and word games for students to look at over the weekend. I find many of my students leave school and don't speak English at home. Some of my students want to watch movies in English but feel overwhelmed with the language and the length of movies. One way I helped improve my own Spanish language skills was by watching short youtube videos in Spanish about subjects that interested me. Students could post short youtube videos to the class page and create discussion questions based on the video.

I love the idea of using social media in the classroom because it's a simple way to motivate students and foster learning.

50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Twitter Chat

I'm new to Twitter but until recently I was pretty against social networking in general.  After pushing myself on a few social networking sites, I feel I've discovered an amazing new world for educators. After poking around twitter for a couple days, I discovered that it's a great resource for connecting with other language teachers and I realized how great it is for professional development.

One of Twitter's features is something called a twitter chat. They are basically online meetings for people to share something on a topic they are interested in. I've started to follow several other language teachers. I joined a language chat (#langchat ) where teachers get together every Thursday and Saturday. Here, teachers can share resources, ask questions, and "meet" other language teachers.

I attended a Thursday night language chat and not much was happening. I found that one person shared a resource that was a game I can use in my English language classroom. I think twitter chats will be great for my professional development. I searched through #ELLchat and found that teachers shared teaching tips and resources. I look forward to attending more twitter chats and look forward to learning more from other educators. I know that having a wider PLN will help me greatly.

Filter Bubbles

Comfort Zone

Although information is now at our fingertips, many people get their news and information from one site: Facebook.

Facebook is filtering everything to personalize it just for you. Unfortunately, the more you click on things you like, the more you continue to see those types of things and the less you see diverse views or diverse topics. According to the article, Facebook: If your Feed is an Echo Chamber, You Need More Friends, there is a growing debate on this. In Eli Pariser's Ted Talk on filter bubbles he says that it's not only who your friends with and what you're clicking on but the algorithms that major companies, like Facebook, have created to filter information.

I agree with Pariser that something must be done about these algorithms and that major companies like Facebook and Google should stop creating algorithms that personalize the information we receive. We need the internet to introduce us to new people, ideas, uncomfortable issues, and diverse view points. If the internet doesn't do this, then we have an unhealthy flow of information that we can't learn a great deal from.

One thing that Facebook has done according to this article, is that it has changed its trending topics so that when you click on something that's trending, you see more than one new source for that topic. I no longer have Facebook so I haven't check this feature but I'm curious if other people have seen changes in the information they receive on Facebook!