The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants
learn - like all immigrants, some better than others - to adapt to their
environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent,"
that is, their foot in the past.
There are hundreds
of examples of the digital immigrant accent.
our Digital Immigrant
instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age),
are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language
Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the
same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the
teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But
that assumption is no longer valid. Today's learners are different.
So what should happen?
Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their
Digital Immigrant educators learn the new?
methodology
learn to communicate in the language and style
of their students
it does mean going faster, less step-by step, more in parallel, with
more random access, among other thing
kinds of content
As educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach
both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives.
Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been
done successfully. My own preference
for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even
for the most serious content.
"Why not make the learning into
a video game!
But while the game was easy for my Digital Native staff to invent,
creating the content turned out to be more difficult for the professors, who
were used to teaching courses that started with "Lesson 1 – the
Interface." We asked them instead to create a series
of graded tasks into which the skills to be learned were embedded. The professors
had made 5-10 minute movies to illustrate key concepts; we asked them to cut
them to under 30 seconds. The professors insisted that the learners to do
all the tasks in order; we asked them to allow random access. They wanted
a slow academic pace, we wanted speed and urgency (we hired a Hollywood script
writer to provide this.) They
wanted written instructions; we wanted computer movies. They wanted the traditional
pedagogical language of "learning objectives," "mastery",
etc. (e.g. "in this exercise you will learn"); our goal was to completely
eliminate any language that even smacked of education.
large mind-shift
required
We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all
subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us.
Emergent by design is an evolving post about the best media resources for educators. Includes links to articles, videos, blogs and wikis to follow, and much more.
Emergent by design is an evolving post about the best media resources for educators. Includes links to articles, videos, blogs and wikis to follow, and much more.
A fabulous site for creating and finding online children's books. Design your 'bestseller' by uploading images and using the bank of media to drag and drop your story to perfection. Then share with a link.
http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English
This is a fantastic start page option for teachers and students. It has everything teachers want (widgets, privacy controls, booksmarks, calendar, RSS, mini blog(journal), notes, to-do, video, and more). The file upload is a big bonus. Students and teachers can personalize the designs and add/share tabs. You can make each tab public or private and grant specific privileges for the tools (widgets).invitIe students individually or bulk upload from a file.
The "professor versus laptop (or other wireless access device)" issue is a false construct if we view technology-mediated learning as a social system offering many ways to alter one component and thus change the whole system. Rather than seeing distraction as a challenge, educators can see it as an opportunity to reflect upon and change the design of their entire instructional approach. Creative and innovative educators can use technology innovations to help reform teaching, similar to the way Guttenberg's press helped bring about scientific revolution and modern authorship.
Picture using this site in conjunction with a digital storytelling assignment. Imagine this as an activity for creating a story book for a younger class.
".... If you were charged with designing a new model for education - and you came to the conclusion that you could ignore 95% of available information and operate without the "tool of the time" - would your system be given the go ahead?"
Is it a given that technology enhances the acts of writing, as it does the arts and sciences of film-making, design, engineering, data collection and analyses, and so forth? What about the teaching and learning of writing?
make any Webpage PrintFriendly
PrintFriendly cleans and formats web pages for perfect print experience. PrintFriendly removes Ads, Navigation and web page junk, so you save paper and ink when you print. It's free and easy to use. Perfect to use at home, the office, or whenever you need to print a web page. Generates a PDF that you can save electronically or a print copy that you can designate font sizes lots of flexibility here.
choose the bookmarklet to add to your bookmark toolbar
get the button for your website or simply add a URL and watch it do its magic
Leading the charge into the next generation of interactive book design is Robin Mitchell-Cranfield, of Vancouver Film School. I had the pleasure of attending Robin's presentation at Adobe MAX Education Summit as well as speaking with her a bit later at Adobe MAX where she shed some light on what she's working on, why she thinks books could forever change and why tablets have been the impetus for her to get so excited about the future of digital publishing.
Despite their spectacular growth in both daily life and mainstream education, little research to date has been conducted concerning the use of social networking sites in foreign language learning. The aim of this study, therefore, is to examine the use of such sites to learn a foreign language. Using an auto-ethnographic approach that included self-aware participation, learner diaries and peer debriefing, we investigated the social networking site Livemocha to study Korean from our perspectives as native speakers and experienced teachers of English. Specifically, we focused our questions on aspects of socio-collaborative principles and practice. Results of a grounded, thematic analysis indicate that the site had number of counter-productive pedagogical impediments to language learning that included, for example, flaws in site design. We conclude our paper with suggestions for improved foreign language learning through social networking sites.