Task 3 (Improvements) -- Group THREE - 2011 CEI course

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Date Posted: 21:07:14 03/11/11 Fri
Author: Luciano Valadares
Subject: Task 3 (Improvements)

Task 3 – Group 3
Caroline de Souza Amaral Duarte
Luciana Maia Menezes
Luciano Valadares
Maurício Horto

Write a position paper about the digital generation of students and the challenges we face in teaching them.

People who are native in the digital language are called Digital Natives. They can also be called Millennials, Generation Yers or Generation Y. They are generally born from 1987 on (but it’s not a rule). “For them technology is more than a tool, it is a central component of everyday life that frames the world view.” The Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, are the ones who are still trying to arrive at this land of digital technology. Most of them are in the thirties nowadays and were born in the Generation X. Actually, many teachers are from this generation.
The Digital Natives spend 12.2 hours online every week, according to Forest Research (2006). Some other features of them are to send instant messages (instead of calling), read blogs, use social network sites like MySpace and Facebook, do something instead of knowing it better (the ability of getting things done is more valued than the accumulation of knowledge), they are multitask (do many things at the same time), etc. A video on Youtube, called Grown up digital.mov expresses in a good way the Net Generation characteristics: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed, and innovation.
When studying in a classroom, these types of students listen to music, use the cell phone and pay attention to the teacher at the same time. We, teachers, that are most of the times Digital Immigrants, can’t understand that, but are these students really paying attention to us? Are these students really learning what is being taught?
It is undeniable that Digital Natives prefer to receive information very rapidly, as Tracy L. Gibson says. They are multiprocessing information while using email, instant messaging, and using the phone (or listening to music). The brain of a student of this generation works differently, since he has different kinds of experiences. As a result of their upbringing and experiences with technology, digital natives have particular learning preferences or styles that differ from earlier generation of students; therefore, the learning path is also different. According to Marc Prensky (2001):
“They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library in their laptops, beamed messages, and instant messaging.” (p.3) the author goes on saying that “They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and ‘tell-test’ instruction.”

Many researches are being made in order to reach a new understanding of the way this generation is learning and to analyze the quality of this learning process. By now there is not any conclusion about that but according to Paul Kirsche:

“Our study, and other previous work, suggests that while people may think constant task-switching allows them to get more done in less time, the reality is, it extends the amount of time needed to carry out tasks and leads to more mistakes… we should resist the fashionable views of educational gurus that children can multi-task, and that we should adapt out education systems accordingly to keep up with the times.”

As stated in PRENSKY (2001), teachers need to reconsider their methodology and their content. About changing the methodology, teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students: going faster and less step-by-step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things. These are indeed some challenges for us, teachers, who are used to explain everything in a logical way, since we think the students will only understand in this manner. Actually, students understand things better with a random access because they face it on the Internet all the time. The content change, by its turn, refers to the contents that are taught. According to PRENSKY (2001) we have to teach the “Legacy” content and the “Future” content. The former includes “normal” contents, like reading, writing, etc; the latter includes software, hardware, robotics, genomics, ethics, politics, sociology, languages, etc. All of these points constitute defiance, considering that teachers tend to think that the less information we give at a time, the more students will “assimilate” the contents.
We agree that there is certainly this new kind of people and that this new generation is sometimes totally different from us (Digital Immigrants). We think that every teacher should notice this difference and struggle in order to reach students in a better way. But we cannot do this simply as an obligation, as the video Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants: Implications for the Classroom on Youtube says. We have to do this (try to use different approaches) because we are aware of the fact that it will be much better for our students and will motivate them much more.
“It’s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language”. (PRENSKY, 2001, p. 2).

We agree with PRENSKY when he says that the role of the teacher is not to be a master at all the new technologies but to know about the technologies and how they can be adopted into the curriculum. It is the student job to do the work and produce things in these technologies and media. Creating new learning experiences, teachers have to show students that the learning process can be as interesting and connected to their reality as the virtual world that they are inserted on. “The twenty-first century is all about creating, inventing, and sharing those things with an increasingly connected world” (Prensky, 2005). It will take the digital natives and the digital immigrants coming together to find different ways and create new procedures to a better relation between students and teachers.

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Replies:

Re: Task 3 (Improvements) -- Caroline, 10:13:11 03/12/11 Sat
- Re: Task 3 (Improvements) -- Luciano Valadares, 18:03:06 03/12/11 Sat