Thursday, November 8, 2012
#Digital Love#
In today's reading regarding digital natives and digital immigrants, there was a question posed that I thought was extremely thought provoking:
Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new?
Today many teachers are hesitant to change their way of instruction, but as educators, we must remember who are target audience is. The students of the future are going to need to be taught in a way that suites their learning style.
As a novice teacher, I am excited to share the 21 Century skills of technology and digital interactions with my student. I feel that today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. Today's students have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
One way to enhance the 21 Century skills of our students is to openly introduce and engage students in the use of technology in the classroom. Today I learned how to create a QR Code, or barcode scanner, for any link that I want to connect to. With this technology, I can create a virtual field trip in my classroom. I can have the students use their smart phone or iphone to scan a code that will link to any website I program. I can have the students study ancient egyptian math using their mobile devices to engage learning concepts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that many educators need to as they say, "get with the times!" Many teachers do not want to change their current instruction...
ReplyDeletemaybe because it's out of their comfort zone, or they fear that their students will know more than them. I guess it's just about educators having proper balance between technology and what ever educational structure they are use to using as long as their students are engaged and learning.
I think that technology can be a great resource to use in the classroom as you mentioned with the virtual field trip. However, technology should be used to enhance their learning instead of replacing the traditional way of teaching. As teachers we learning to teach to the diverse population of students, technology could be a teaching TOOL not a way to teach.
ReplyDelete