Digital Status

I am firmly in the digital native camp. I remember playing Spider Fighter for Atari at daycare when I was approximately 4 years old, in 1985, and receiving a Nintendo game system for my birthday sometime around 1988. During most of high school we did not have a home computer so I spent many hours in the computer lab learning about the email, chat and the internet in general. It wasn’t until 1999 when I saved enough to purchase my own computer. I bought and built several more throughout the years, and played games on them during college. To this day I enjoy finding new ways of storing, transferring and organizing information related to grocery lists, family schedules, finances and homework assignments.
As a freshman in high school, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a beginners computing class that covered basic programming, database management and searching the internet. This was between 1996 and 1999, so other than overhead projectors and DVD players, we did not have technology in every classroom. I did know that I would be involved with computers later in life, and especially in college, so I took a typing class my first year. Typing turned out to be one of the most important skills I learned while in high school.
The technology available in college was on a whole other level. Not only had technology improved in the few short months after high school, but I was at a major institution with a lot more funding. In the dorms, we were supplied with broadband internet, which was orders of magnitude faster than anything available to the residential market. As an engineering student, I used computers to write programs and run simulations in a matter of seconds that would have taken hours on a home computer. We were able to try things, visualize the outcome and develop an understanding of the material that was once not possible, and because of this, the learning experience was richer.
Because I consider myself a digital native, I wholeheartedly agree with the articles. I think we, as educators, need to take some lessons from game developers and be more creative when we put lesson plans together. Games are marketed using words like, “Encounter, engage, fly, explore, take on your friends, exciting, challenging, master, amass, build, perform, research, lead and don’t work alone” (Prensky, 2005). If we want our students to be engaged in class we need to have lessons that are engaging. According to Prenksy, “...we have to find new ways to engage our students - not just to create new lesson plans, not even to just put curriculum online” (Prensky, 2005). According to Prensky in his article “Digital Natives Digital Immigrants”, “... they have short attention spans - for old ways of learning”.
We need to start over. We need a complete change of perspective. As I read these articles, I began to think like a user of technology as opposed to a student using technology for learning, or an educator using technology for teaching. I’ve started thinking about what I use everyday and how I can bring these methods of communicating into the classroom rather than how I can change what is in the classroom to make learning more fun. That is how we should be looking at this. Even today I have yet to find a learning tool that engages me so fully as a computer game. When my time to teach comes, my goal is to find a way to incorporate Twitter, YouTube, audio/video recording and editing, cellphones, texting, email and the various tools developed by Google into my teaching. Students should be using twitter to ask questions real-time that appear on an overhead projector so we can eliminate raising hands. Students should be using YouTube to post video assignments and submitting homework via email. Students should be using Google to write blogs, search for images, find news, schedule, create groups and share photos, all for school assignments. We need to make this change; our students depend on it.

References

Prensky, M. (2005). "Engage me or enrage me": what today's learners demand. EDUCAUSE Review, 40(5), 60-65.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-6.