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.)