Digital Reflection Assignment

The article Digital Natives was extremely interesting and a little intimidating. The reason I feel it is intimidating is because I think I fianlly realized that I am definately going to have to incorporate technology into my lesson. That scares me a little bit because I am definately not a Digital Native but rather a Digital Immigrant who is not particularily savvy with technology. According to the article, "Our students have changed rapidly. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." This is a very important statement because it only reaffirms that we have to change our educational system to accomodate the Digital Natives. As stated by the artile, "If Digital Immigrant educators really want to teach Digital Natives - i.e. all their students - they will have to change." Before reading this article, I felt that I could possibly get by with out incorporating a lot of technology and doing things the "old way." However, after reading the article I have realized this will never work. Growing up with technology has actually wired the student's brains differently then older generation's brains were wired. We were taught with a slower methodology whereas today's youth are taught a lightening fast pace with instant gratifiaction. The article states, "They [students] function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to "serious work." "They've been networked most or all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic and "tell-test" instruction." This is important to know for any teacher. this means you will constantly have to be changing your teaching style within one lesson in order to keep students engaged and on task. Otherwise, they will get bored and disinterested. We, as teachers, must also incorporate projects into our lessons that involve using technology which the students will be familiar with. It will be very important in our teaching careers to accept help from our students and remain flexible and creative.