Blog # 3

Blog # 3

Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives

I undoubtedly fall in the category of digital immigrant. Although I am fascinated and enjoy learning about new technology, I continue to have somewhat of a digital immigrant “accent”. So how will I as a teacher able to teach a digital native anything?
As discussed in Marc Prensky’s article Digital Natives Digital Immigrants , “unless we want to just forget about educating Digital Natives until they grow up and do it themselves, we had better confront this issue. And in so doing we need to reconsider both our methodology and our content.” This addresses #5 of the NETS Standards for Teachers; it is our responsibility to engage in professional growth and leadership. Students of today, aka the digital natives, learn differently and therefore we must approach teaching by methods that they can and are will to receive.
Digital natives “thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards”, “are used to receiving information really fast”, and “like to parallel process and multi-task” (Prensky, pg 2). Therefore, if we do not grab their attention and keep them actively engaged, we are likely to lose their attention. Integrating technology throughout the curriculum will certainly address this issue as well as tie in many of the NETS Standards for Students. For instance, assigning a group project such as a claymation, designing a webpage, or even creating a class newsletter, addresses: creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and use of information, and demonstrates an understanding of technology concepts and operations.
The only issues that I can foresee that may arise with the integration of technology in the classroom is the availability of technological resources to all students. We must be mindful of this fact and allow for equal in class time for students that do not have alternative resources available.
Technology is not only our future, but it is our present. We must learn to apply it in our classrooms if we want our students to succeed.

Clear and to the Point

Being somewhat technologically challenged and having participated in the construction of only one PowerPoint presentation, I found Chapter 1 of Stephen Kosslyn’s Clear and to The Point quite enlightening. I am guilty of over utilizing the many options available with the PowerPoint program. However, now that I know what works and what maybe doesn’t work so well, I will surely have a better presentation next time!
Kosslyn addresses three primary goals in the first chapter; he summarizes these 3 goals with eight principles.
Goal One: Connecting with your audience ~ stresses the importance of focusing the audience’s attention on your specific message
Principle One and Two: Too much or too little information can be distracting. All information included in the presentation should be directly related to what information you want the audience to retain, no more no less. You need to carefully consider the language, displays, and concepts you use; will your audience be familiar and able to connect to them?
Goal Two: Direct and hold attention ~ material should be presented in a way that does not distract from your message, one piece at a time
Principle Three, Four, and Five: Significant visual differences draw attention; the main focus should be visually obvious (e.g. in bold text or much larger than any other aspect on the slide). Attention will also be drawn to how you group or visually arrange the aspects of your slide.
Goal Three: Promote understanding and memory ~ keep in mind the mental processes and limitations of how people retain information
Principle Six, Seven, and Eight: Avoid conflicting the message with the form of the message (i.e. writing “big” in small letters or “SMALL” in large letters slows down the mental process and causes confusion, keep the message direct and clear). Unnecessary aspects on the slide will distract your audience from the message; “what they see is what they get”. Furthermore don’t overwhelm the audience with information, special effects, or irrelevant information; only so much information can be retained and processed.


The central NETS standard for teachers that I connected with this chapter was:
3. c. Communicate relevant information and ideas effectively to students, parents, and peers using a variety of digital-age media and formats.

Claymation Assignment

The NETS standards for students that were addressed in the claymation activity were:

1. Creativity and Innovation~
a. In order for our group to be able to construct a process with stages, we needed prior knowledge of what occurrences developed in stages; we then applied our prior knowledge of these processes in construction of our claymation project
b. We used clay, construction paper, and markers to construct our project which expressed the process of predator vs. prey
c. We constructed models of a frog and butterfly to display the process of metamorphosis

2. Communication and Collaboration~
a. In the construction of our C-Map we worked collaboratively from home via the internet
b. The processes of metamorphosis and predator vs. prey were communicated to our audiences through the construction of our C-Map and our claymation project; they each showed the stages of metamorphosis and the end result of predator vs. prey
d. Each member of our group contributed to the project by: collaborating via the internet in construction of the C-Map (which also involved some problem solving) and the physical processes of constructing models, taking pictures, and applying our project to a digital program to produce an original work.

4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making~
a. Our group discussed the physical processes of our project and discussed the probable problems that might develop (how will we present this activity in clay or construction paper, what additional items might we need?)
b. After discussion on our concerns on how to construct our initial idea out of clay, we decided to change the topic of our project; each student was then given a portion of the project to complete (formation of the clay models, picture taking, background construction, etc.)

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious stories about how hard things were when they were growing up; like walking twenty-five miles to school every morning..... Uphill BOTH ways.Yadda, Yadda, Yadda....And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of lies like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in Utopia!And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
We didn't have fancy things like Call Waiting!
If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, a collections agent, you just didn't know! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like Space Invaders and Asteroids. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you just lost out!!!!!!Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were out of luck when it came to channel surfing!
You had to get off the couch and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little kids!And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove or go build a fire..... imagine that!
If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.That's exactly what I'm talking about!
You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970!Regards to The over 30 Crowd!