I have been working on getting my masters in Educational Technology over the past year. It has been quite a process and throughout, I've learned a great deal about subjects I knew very little about and have reaffirmed knowledge in areas I already knew. One topic I have found very interesting is the idea of "digital natives" and "digital immigrants."
Put simply, for the most part, digital natives were born into technology use or have used technology for a majority of their lifetimes. They feel comfortable using new technology and find it intuitive. Typically, digital immigrants, meanwhile, were not born into technology. Similar to immigrants to a new place, digital immigrants had to learn technology use almost if learning a new language and figure out how to adapt.
I found all of this to have such huge implications for the way that I operate within my school. Working with second graders, I can assume that the students I interact with are digital natives. The fact that they thrive on instant gratification and groove off of frequent rewards further feeds into this theory. According to Prensky (2001) “Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task” (p. 3). Knowing all of this influences the way I teach those students. It plays into my classroom management and the way I give out directions. On so many instances, I have written step-by-step directions on the board and then felt frustrated when students do not respond well to my list. Knowing that my young digital natives prefer to operate in a different manner has changed the way I introduce new tasks and expect them to carry out routines.
At the same time, when I lead a professional development in my school, I now think completely differently about the audience I have in front of me. With a current mix of digital natives and digital immigrants, it is important to take into account the different learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses, to be able to go from there. How does this impact you in your educational setting? In what ways have you experienced this? I'd love to hear other opinions!
Put simply, for the most part, digital natives were born into technology use or have used technology for a majority of their lifetimes. They feel comfortable using new technology and find it intuitive. Typically, digital immigrants, meanwhile, were not born into technology. Similar to immigrants to a new place, digital immigrants had to learn technology use almost if learning a new language and figure out how to adapt.
I found all of this to have such huge implications for the way that I operate within my school. Working with second graders, I can assume that the students I interact with are digital natives. The fact that they thrive on instant gratification and groove off of frequent rewards further feeds into this theory. According to Prensky (2001) “Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task” (p. 3). Knowing all of this influences the way I teach those students. It plays into my classroom management and the way I give out directions. On so many instances, I have written step-by-step directions on the board and then felt frustrated when students do not respond well to my list. Knowing that my young digital natives prefer to operate in a different manner has changed the way I introduce new tasks and expect them to carry out routines.
At the same time, when I lead a professional development in my school, I now think completely differently about the audience I have in front of me. With a current mix of digital natives and digital immigrants, it is important to take into account the different learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses, to be able to go from there. How does this impact you in your educational setting? In what ways have you experienced this? I'd love to hear other opinions!
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| image found at http://access-information.com/digital-natives-workplace/ |
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