Digital Immigrant

This article really opened my eyes to the differences in the way my generation learned in school verses the way the "digitally native" generation learns. I hadn't really thought about the basic way I learned when I was in school verses the way my children learn. I agree that it is fundamentally different. All I need to do is watch my son do his homework with those little buds hanging from his ears to see that time has changed the way we do things. When I ask him about it, he tells me that he can't concentrate without some kind of noise. That is so different from the way I concentrate. Don't get me wrong, I am good at concentrating with noise (otherwise I would never get my homework done), but I don't seek it out in order to study like my children do.

Knowing there are differences in our basic methods of learning and concentrating, I can see that I will need to adjust my thinking and be creative in the way I teach in order to engage my students and help them to enjoy learning and to retain what they learn. How to use technology to help my students to learn the content areas is frankly something I will need to learn more about. This is one area that I will need to really work on because I believe it will be essential. My students will definitely be digitally native and I have a strong "accent." I will have to really take notes in this class and continue to look for new ideas on how to use technology to help my students learn.