I may seem young, the early thirties, but I have seen a thing or two, which gives me the best of both worlds. I grew up in a time when it was a luxury to have that offal dial tone of the internet. To this day, I still remember when you had to wait for at least five minutes to connect and then you could only be on it at various times because it was linked to the house phone. Oh yes, the joys of having to wait for that dial tone and then finally get connected. Oh, the memories!! I grew up when cell phones were only for adults, and you were lucky to borrow it but could use it for emergencies. Absolutely no texting or you were lucky enough to only have about 1000 messages PER month. Rather than have these so called smart phones, Blackberry was the coolest thing to have! Did I mention social media? What social media, the closest thing to social media was ICQ, IM chat, and you had a Myspace page. If my students read this post, they wouldn’t know have the of the stuff I even mentioned. But what’s to say that I’m not a “digital native”?
Growing was quite different of those “digital natives” of today. Things quite, for a lack of the better term, simple when it came to technology. I grew up having a VCR/DVD player which would evolve to Blue-Ray. Saw the transformation of dial-up turn to WIFI. Saw the transformation of music from Cassette tapes to CD, to the first ever digital music device, the MP3 player, and not IPods. Having only 1000 messages to text, and boy you didn’t go over, to having unlimited. Seeing how social media has become the new rave. And lastly, but not surely, having the simple cell phone turn to the greatest smartphone. when I look back at the times and how things have changed, I find myself having the best of both worlds. It’s because of this that I feel that I have adapted to how technology has changed how we view our world and the educational world. This wasn’t merely because I wanted to fit in, it was a mere decision because I wanted to. I chose, well more like nagged my parents, to become more adapted to our changing world. Ever since my family gets’ it first computer, I was intrigued on how it work. I may have taken it apart a time or two! Because of this, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a “digital immigrate”. There are countless times that my colleagues come to me, or I go to them in search of any app, or looking at how to do something. It’s because of this and my love for technology, that I continue to learn.
When we look at the digital native, the millennial generation, not all view or have the opportunities to use technology in ways that we think the millennial generation ought to know. Countless times, students come to my classroom, probably the technology that is used in my building, not knowing how to do something simple as attaching an email, or know the basic functions of Google Drive. Today’s generation want the new and latest and greatest technology, without ever thinking how it will benefit them. Today I see students with Fitbits, which is absolutely nothing wrong, but they don’t understand the extent of the features that are at their finger tips. Same can be said for Smartphones. Many people fall into different levels of tech-savviness that allow them to fall into Prensky’s native/immigrant spectrum of thinking. Looking behind the scenes, there are other key players that may define an individual into the two categories. The biggest being the digital divide. Not only the digital divide but other factors such as socioeconomic, resources and access to technology also play a role in distinguishing which we all fit in. However, when we look at McKenzie and his explanation, we can see that there are more factors that play into it and there is much more to a person and technology.
Really, whose to blame? When looking that the students of the millennial generation, they grew up in a time that technology is more accessible. We are in a time that Ipads, IPods, and Smartphones replace the oh loving color book. Rather than learn how to type the traditional way on a keyboard, they learned how to type on their or their parents Smartphone. Even today, students struggle with functions of writing using programs such as Google Docs. As an advocate for technology and a person who had the best of both works, it’s dishearting. Although I’m an advocate and consider myself pretty tech-savvy, students still teach me a thing or two, and vice versa. but what about those who don’t fit into either spectrum? Trust me they’re out there. These are the ones who refuse to evolve their teaching and use technology, or technology is very limited in their vocabulary. They fail to realize the benefits in which technology offers students for their education, where as the same is said for those student’s who consider “low-tech” learning as not the cool way to learn. Why can’t we find a happy medium with both?
When we look at the happy medium, we as educators strive to look for ways in which we enhance students learning and create an environment in which students embrace their knowledge of technology and use it to their benefits and not shy them away from aspects of technology in the future. Although technology plays a large role, there are some traditional aspects that continue to also be a part of students benefits as well. The biggest strive for myself and my colleagues, which I continue to do, is to find that happy medium of both traditional systems while not shy away from the technology because it’s too difficult.
So what’s the big deal between digital native vs. digital immigrant? Why does it have to be one or the other? Regardless of what generation you or I were born into, we all continue to learn and use technology as it continues to evolve and becomes more complex. Because of issues such as the digital gap, issues of divide need to be repaired. In order to fix the broken, we must progress in ways that minimize these gaps. For this to happen, we as educators must be open to finding a solution and willing to learn and communicate. Becuase technology has such a strong influence on our students and how they learn and interact within the classroom, it’s not the sole purpose of who they are. Educators need to evaluate how we look at students and the expectations we have for them as our primary focus, and the technology piece will fall into place, allowing us to create a positive environment for both enhancing learning and technology.
Regardless of any differences and any gaps, your comment “educators strive to look for ways in which we enhance students learning and create an environment in which students embrace their knowledge of technology and use it to their benefits and not shy them away from aspects of technology in the future” is truly the take-away from all this. Honestly, let’s just take these differences, whether it be teacher-student or just student-student and embrace ways to enhance their learning – technology or otherwise. My students are sometimes ten steps ahead of me with slang (still not sure what ‘lit’ is), but I can still do research to be one step ahead of them on the new ways to incorporate technology into my lessons effectively! I do think about the idea of “happy-medium”. Any dieas of how to open the minds of some teachers who may be adverse to the “happy medium?”
Katie,
I know exactly what you mean! When I do projects with my students, they are usually way ahead of me in what they want to use for technology. It’s super hard to find that happy medium. In some of the tweets that I’ve seen come through my feeds, there have been a lot about continue to use paper and pencil. I think the happy medium in all of this, is finding a way to use both things. Neither one hurts using, so why go away with it? Your question is hard. In the saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, is the same as showing those teachers how technology really enhances the students but you can’t make them use. I think one way is to continually to show the importance of technology in hoping that they pick it up. I think conferences are another great idea as it showcases how other teachers use tech in their classrooms. From experience, the conferences have really opened my eye as there are a lot of web 2.0 tools out and refreshing to see new ideas that I’ve gone back and incorporated them into my own practices. But regardless, your question will always be a tough issue.