Having grown up in the in between space of the Digital Immigrants and the Digital Natives, I have advantages and disadvantages to be able to teach the future generations of students. While I have a pretty adapt knowledge of the Internet, gaming, social networking, software, and can use my cell phone to do just about anything my computer could, I am still light years behind my students. The entire reason that I chose to go through with the EdTech MA at APU was just that. I want to keep up and find ways to engage my students that seem to have the limited attention span that everyone in education is talking about.
I graduated from high school only seven years ago, just about when Marc Prensky was composing his writings Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (DN,DI), parts one and two. Looking back, I had a combination of teachers; some which rose to the tech challenge, and some that did not. I am fortunate that I substitute at my high school and am able to see the progress that has been made. Not much. Not that there are not attempts, the school purchased 9 Promethean SmartBoards with a grant, but they cannot afford to train teachers to use them or afford the upkeep to replace projector bulbs and update software. In the small attempts made to create trainings, no one shows up. Why? Because they cannot afford to take time to learn this new material when they are struggling to stay afloat in the flurry of standardized testing. The new teachers with the energy and passion to teach themselves this information in order teach their Digital Native students more effectively are fighting for their jobs or are unemployed.
Ok with that said, onto the issue of these Digital Natives and how we should teach them. In Part 1 of DN,DI, Prensky states that “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.” And quoting Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Prensky says, “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures.” That statement alone is inarguable to me. The idea that students learn differently now and education will continue to evolve is as black and white as the idea that technology has advanced over the last 200 years. We function different than we used to and therefore need to learn to function differently. “Digital Immigrants don’t believe their students can learn successfully learn while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can’t.” Why should education be the only industry in the world exempt from technological advances, just because those working now did not “grow up” with technology? When in fact, they DID grow up with technology; it was just different than video games, texting, the Internet and recordable television. We need to cater to the capabilities of our students, not ourselves. The invention of the pencil or the slide-rule, were technologies of their times, and schools adapted to using them. We type assignments now thanks to the introduction of the typewriter way back when, because of its efficiency and ease. However, learning how to type was a process that took time, effort and the drive to advance, for both the students and the teachers. Part 2 of DN, DI states,
“Digital Native accustomed to the twitch-speed, multi-tasking, random-access, graphics-first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of their video games, MTV, and the Internet are bored by most of today’s education, well meaning as it may be. But worse, the many skills that new technologies have actually enhanced (e.g., parallel processing, graphics awareness, and random access)—which have profound implications for their learning—are almost totally ignored by educators.”
I guess what I do not understand about the technology struggle today, is WHY NOT? Why wouldn’t we want to create an environment that has proven to increase comprehension, skill level and educational capability? Technology is ever evolving and is going to continue to change and advance, with generations after generations that will be the new Natives to the new technologies. With learners so different today, and so different tomorrow, the balance of the “legacy” content (writing, reading, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc—all of the traditional curriculum) and the “future” content (digital and technological—software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, ethics, politics, sociology, languages) is the crucial element to make education current, productive and successful. If we need to use video games to make that happen, so be it, and teachers should be eager to oblige if it gets across the important stuff.
