There is a difference between the people that grew up with technology and those who did not. Simple. Mark Prensky names these different groups of people Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. In a multimedia world where young people communicate via text, twitter and facebook at the age of three, adjustments must be made. Again, this idea seems simple to me. Steve Maher of Chatnam High School says that students walking into a classroom with out technology is “like walking into a desert,” and Jason Levy, a middle-school principal in Brooklyn, NY, compares technology to oxygen, stating that there would never be a question of whether students should have access to oxygen. That said, why would we ever want to deprive our students of oxygen and make them sit in a desert? Jason Levy makes another valid argument that there are reasonably NO jobs that require one to sit in a chair and be quiet. How can we expect students to practice something that there is no practical use for? True, students are multi-tasking, in essence gulping in air at lightning speed in the information age, but are they choking?
Out of all the discussion back and forth on the subject, the most shocking thing that jumps out at me is the fact that some educators can ignore that the purpose of education for the students of today is different. Students do not necessarily need to retain loads of information to be able to regurgitate it at any given second, however, they need to be able to go and do. Students need to be able to problem solve and use the vast millions of resources, i.e. the internet, cell phones, social networks, and access to information in general, to find the answers and solutions to questions. The purpose of education today is to teach these people how to use the technology in question, to access the knowledge of the past present and future. The purpose is to prepare students for their future, which will include technology whether you like it or not.
Another argument against the advancement of technology is the observation that students are not able to carryout a complete linear thought process due to the access of instant gratification education, says James Paul Gee of ASU. Mark Prensky claims that the content of learning should remain but there need to be new ways of teaching; the nouns such as a chalkboard vs. a SmartBoard may change, but the meat is the same. We may lose some aspects attention span and concentration in the process, but that is the price of gain.
So…
How do we accomplish this? How do we balance the development of new technology and methods with the content that precedes legacy? As educators in a world that has sped up while education hasn’t, how can we find effective uses of technology to enhance instruction and student achievements, engaging them in cross-curricular, career and college preparatory activities and projects that provide our students with purpose?
