Prensky Digital Natives Response

Originally posted here.

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Prensky Digital Natives Response
Current mood: validated
Posted Jan 10, 2009

Oh, by the way, I got my teaching assignment today! I'm teaching in my first pick school! Starting March 5th!!! Hooray! I won't be in the inner city! This could be an enjoyable experience. Not wanting to talk crap about the inner city, but I don't think I could handle it for my student teaching experience.

Response from a Drexel Assignment:

The characteristics of a Digital Native are that they naturally enjoy using technology to complete tasks and interface and share with others. Digital natives are very prevalent in our schools. Many of them have more experience with computers and video games than their parents, and their parents go to them as a trouble-shooting resource. We can learn a lot from digital natives because they try to make their mark on the Internet and technology, to be creative and innovate, and not just learn to use it.

As a teacher, I need to use the Piaget theory of Multiple Intelligences to my advantage. These students eat and breathe technology, so if my classroom doesn't allow them to use, build, and demonstrate their digital intelligence, I am doing them a disservice. I also must teach them good skills of being a digital contributor and being a responsible digital citizen by teaching them to be respectful, and not to cyber-bully. Just because you aren't saying something hurtful to someone's "face" doesn't make it okay and we need to help each other learn and grow, not tear each other down. I can also engage students through using these new technologies to instruct and facilitate with PowerPoints, WebQuests, Podcasts, Interactive White Boards, etc, and have projects where students can create and research products and present them through new technologies like Podcasts, Blogs, PowerPoints, and movies. Students can present their projects to one another via connectivity websites like Moodle for the classroom for peer review.

I am not in the classroom, but what has worked for me in the past (in the planetarium) is to use multimedia to tell a story and to promote questions. After each slide, a question was proposed, and we gave time for the students to think about the question and to start answering it creatively. Sometimes they'd get it right, and sometimes not. Then we'd answer the question on the next slide/segment (okay, it was actually a segment, we were not using an old slide projector, don't want to give you the wrong idea) and ask another question that would transition to the next. A way this relates to the keynote speaker are that Prensky spoke about Engage Me or Enrage Me. In our planetarium, we tried to always engage all the students and have them asking questions about space, our galaxy, and the universe. We were also able to engage them through professional multimedia working together to transition and tell a story, so kids could follow along but still feel challenged and awed. We provided scaffolding during the opening to give them important vocabulary words that they may have learned in their Earth/Space science unit, or are maybe just hearing for the first time. We talk a lot about planetary motion later in the show, so we would make sure to remind students what the difference is between rotating and revolutions. "The Earth rotates in 24 hours, and it takes 365 days to make one revolution in its orbit, etc." Except we'd have them work out the difference by asking them questions so they could work toward the right answer. Technology can facilitate learning, express ideas, and make understanding easier, but we still need to be questioning and working toward answers, not just enjoy technology for technology's sake.

Things that need changing are less busywork, worksheets, and memorization, and more critical and creative thought, more technology. I already knew that I hated math by the second grade because all we did was work by ourselves on endlessly long worksheets that were busywork. I guess that they were good for us to practice our skills and memorize our multiplication tables, but there needs to be a better way to engage students because it was the most boring thing ever. I would get half-way through the worksheet and then just be so bored I couldn't finish it and wouldn't turn it in uncompleted. Anyway, ironically I still plugged away at math because I loved physics and astronomy and I needed to know math to do them. I do think that it's up to elementary teachers to help students enjoy math, but I know a lot of elementary teachers that don't really like or understand math either, so its not a good system. I'm glad that one of the online Drexel courses works with the Drexel Math Forum, and we diagnose a math student in our Case Study. It taught me more about math teaching, which is important for a future physics teacher. (I think it is a good experience for any teacher that may be called upon to teach something resembling math, even if it's teaching how to plan time - that has its roots in math - "dividing" time, working with fractions of hours, etc.) :-)

Teaching and learning will look like exploring and "playing" with concepts in my classroom. In teaching core physics and physical science concepts, I will tie things into real-life examples, use demos to demonstrate concepts in action, and pull from many multimedia resources and technologies to help students gain understanding and critical thought of the concepts. Students will make and use raw data to analyze in authentic situations and work in group projects to create and innovate on ideas. Some of the best projects I've observed in shadow and field experiences have been when the students made a water-powered rocket that carried an egg up and then needed a parachute to come out and padding to protect the egg. The kits were very inexpensive and the body of the rocket was made of two 2-Liter plastic soda bottles. The students could work alone or in a group and were able to put personal touches on their rockets. Adequate scaffolding and teacher feedback was given during the project so that nearly every rocket was successful, but much of the success was due to the student's efforts and engagement. Students will also have access to robust software for problem solving, like Maple, which is what many experts in the field would be using. I will create authentic, project based learning for the students to demonstrate their learning and play with new concepts. New technologies will be an important part of the process, and I will use Jing to give students access to homework help when they are at home, and I will use Moodle to keep our class in touch and active out of the classroom. Students can share learning and websites with their peers, respond to peer work, and help each other in a supportive group of physics learning.