Digitial Natives Response

I thought that this article was very interesting to read. It got me thinking; I believe my generation is somewhere between the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. There are some of us who grew up with computers and rushed home from school to get on instant messager but there are also some of us that were not exposed to computers and technology until later on in life. Now, we are all slowly moving to the Digital Natives but we are behind in some areas than the students younger than us. For example, I work in an elementary school and when I first got my ipod touch, I was unsure of how to do everything on it. Some of my students didn't even have an ipod touch and was showing me how to do different things on it and search for songs I wanted to find. It blew my mind. I think that Digital Natives do learn entirely different. Technology has encouraged them to learn hands on and learn through exploration. Whereas, the Digital Immigrants were more learn through the process of being taught or straight lecture or readings. The concept of the teachers having to catch up to the students is very true, just as our parents have to catch up to us with all the technology. Teachers have to think outside of the box to reach their students because students today are learning differently than students of the past. With ADD and ADHD becoming more and more prominent today, teachers cannot teach through straight lectures, readings and demonstrations. They have to think of new ideas to teach where the students are able to use technology and learn through their own experiences as well as handson. For example, when doing research about a specific topic, it is okay for teachers to stay they have to use at least one book for research but to think that the students are going to retrieve all of their information on a given topic through books is crazy. That may have been to do it in the past but this generation is so adapt to researching on the internet that they would become so frustrated doing all of their research in the library with books.