Somewhere In The Middle..

Am I a digital immigrant or a native?  After reading the literature for this week’s class and viewing the videos, I am confident that I am neither.  While I have no problem creating word documents, navigating the internet, and using e-mail (even with attachments!), there are still many aspects of technology I have to learn.  My work at school involves a lot of technology (PowerPoint, document camera, Internet), but I realize that I do not require even that much from my students.  If I want to become the digital native my students already are, I will have to 1. learn how to incorporate more technology into my teaching, and 2. allow and expect that my students will use it on their learning journey.

Students today must learn the 3 R’s, but more importantly the 4E’s (Exposing Knowledge, Employing Information, Expressing Ideas, and Ethics on the Internet).  Education is still taking place as it was designed for students who were going to work on assembly lines during the Industrial Revolution.  That is not their reality today, but we are not teaching them to embrace and use their creativity in order to innovate and create change.  This does not mean we teachers will not expect students to learn content, it is what we ask them to do with that content and the ways in which we assess them that must change.  We do not want to create robots, we need to create self-advocate learners who have a need to discover the answers for themselves.  This is the only way our country will compete with the rest of the world.  Our students must take the content they learn and present it with image, sound, and video components. 

This does not mean our teaching takes a backseat.  Our teaching becomes even more important, we just must change the way in which we deliver the message.  If we engage our students in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them (i.e., technology), they will have a thirst for knowledge such that they cannot help but want to learn more.  Students need variation in delivery and in product.  We cannot do the same thing over and over again and expect that they will accept that and produce creative results.  Students must work together.  Often.  The work place is like that and so must be our schools.  If we want our students to be successful in the future, then we must teach them to work with others and develop leadership skills to solve problems.  These are skills that we teachers now have to add to our content.

We are preparing today’s students for many jobs that do not even exist.   What does exist for our students, however, is technology.  The old saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em.”  To some that may sound like teachers are giving up and giving into their students, but again, we are not saying our students do not need to learn the content we teach.  Instead of fighting all of the technology that excites them outside of school, bring it inside the school and allow them to use it to learn!  When they are excited, they will do far more than if we ask them to write with a pencil on paper.

Dr. Wagner’s 3 Cornerstones for Educators today: 1. Hold Ourselves Accountable, 2. Do New Work in New Ways, and 3. Use Content to Teach Competency are all things that I (and all teachers) need to keep in mind.  As I said before, I am not a digital immigrant, but I have a long way to go to be a native.  If I do not push my own boundaries of digital literacy and competency, my students won’t learn to use these tools effectively.  My job as a teacher is even more important today because my students need me to teach them to use the technology in a positive and meaningful way.  I guess I better get started…