I just read Sunny’s blog post A Vision of K-12 Students Today about a video she found. I found it thought provoking and very moving.
In the middle of the video, the students hold up a number of signs asking how different forms of technology (ipod, camera, laptop etc) could help them learn. I think this is a clear challenge to teachers to think beyond the obvious. It is our challenge, our job, to develop with the techonology, and enable our students to use all the tools they have available to them. Especially the ones that they are most interested in, and that are going to become ever more important in the future. The students are asking to be taught to think, create, analyse, evaluate, and apply. The internet is the perfect tool with which to learn all of these skills, with the right training, programs, and i believe, the right philosophy. Fundamentally, the students are asking to be engaged.
The underlying theme that seems to be present in this article is that teachers need to learn from their students in the digital areas where they feel less at home, and need to include the students in decsions about their own learning. However, to me, this valid message gets lost in the other claims Prensky makes. To me, this article seems to be about a very narrow group of students on the whole. It is about the kids that can afford the money and the time spent gaming and using the internet excessively. What about those students who do not have a computer at home, or have internet access, or own a Wii? The inequality of access does not seem to be taken into account. To label a whole generation ‘digital natives’ and another ‘digital immigrants’ seems like an oversimplification.
I have one overriding question, am I a digital immigrant or native? What about the generation of teachers at I am a part of? Where do we stand in Prensky’s distinct, somewhat polarising division between the teacher-immigrant and student-native? I have grown up with the internet, with gaming, with computers and mobile phones, and yet I am also a teacher, am I therefore technologically disadvantaged?
