Discussion 1

I found the article about Digital Natives and Immigrants very interesting. However, my opinion and comments for that article are torn. I do agree with the idea that older teachers who are used to doing things a certain way do need to change and adapt their methods, whether it has to do with technology or not. Being a special education major, there have been many changes in how we should instruct children in general, but some of our older, more experienced colleagues are reluctant or refuse to participate, or are not getting the training to think out of the box. I also think that this article was interesting because I have a friend who teaches math at Southern Union. He says that the new "teaching trend" that they are all hearing about is called 'naked teaching,' or using just an overhead or hand outs. You mean, the way people used to teach? I think that there should be some change and that teachers should be open to using technology to reach their students in a way that's beneficial. I am torn on too much change, because I agree with some of the other posts that we shouldn't make school fast and fun just because that is the way that students are used to doing things. Again, I believe that we are teaching people that they don't have to wait, be patient, bored, and they have to be rewarded all the time. Life outside of school isn't like that, and the whole point of teaching these children is so that they can learn and grow to become successful. The other thing that I didn't like about this article is that it didn't really address the money factor. Many schools do not have the money to buy the resources to use cutting edge technology in the classroom. When I was in high school, the computers at school were always old and out of date. I didn't even have a computer period at my first teaching job, so my use of technology was limited to say the least. Teachers that don't have the resources shouldn't be shunned for not using technology. If it's not available, what do you do? I consider myself a digital native and I do love gadgets, but I do think that using technology in the classroom should be beneficial to the lessons, not just for the sake of having technology in the lesson. We are there to teach first.

I also thought that the article about children's computer usage was very interesting. I didn't realize that there was so much information about physical development and the interference of development and computers! The amount of data in the article was overwhelming. I do think that they did a good job of addressing all of the areas and ways that children use and are affected by computers. Some points that were brought up I hadn't even thought of, such as the physical development. This article also linked to the digital natives and immigrants in my mind, because we have some digital immigrants (parents) trying to teach digital natives (their children) about the correct, safest, and most beneficial usage of computers. This can be difficult, and means that we have to educate the parents as well as the children. Parents do use computers for different things and may not be aware of all the dangers or situations that may befall their children while using a computer.