Good Example

"Digital Kids"

Introduction

Not only do you have to understand what you need to teach your students, but it's always wise to learn about and gain experience with the students that you hope to teach. The current generation of students is referred to as Digital Natives or Digital Kids.

These students differ from previous generations in several key ways. They have grown up with many forms of technology all around them: computers, videos games, mp3 players, cell phones to name just a few.

According to the United States Department of Education (2005), these students are:

  • the most diverse generation yet
  • have strong ties to family
  • value education / achievement-oriented
  • grew up with technology
  • have substantial economic influence
  • regularly using a wide variety of technologies

Research on Digital Kids

one boy and two girls sitting on a couch with an smartphone, tablet, and laptop.





“Technology is anything that was invented after you were born.” — Alan Kay 1980s







 

Donald Tapscott, in his paper ''Growing Up Digital Links to an external site.," says these students are "embracing interactive multimedia such as the Internet, social media, and video games." They are "exceptionally curious, self-reliant, contrarian, smart, focused, able to adapt, high in self-esteem, and have a global orientation. Not only are they, demographically-speaking, the greatest challenge to the cultural supremacy of the baby boomers, but technologically-speaking, there has been a change in the way children gather, accept and retain information."

 

Each year Project Tomorrow conducts Speak Up, a national research project, to collect data and stimulate discussion about K-12 educational technology. Take a look at the most recent results:

 

One key finding I want to point out is how teachers feel about their preparedness for teaching. Look at the table below for the results of barriers to implementing online courses.

Questions Percentage of Total
Not comfortable with tools 18
Not comfortable with teaching online 17
Reluctant to try it 14
No expertise to develop 14

Looking Ahead

In this course, we are going to look at ways to create those interactive experiences with tools that are available. It would be great if we take all of the required curriculum and turn it into an interactive video game. That may be part of learning in the future, but for now we will focus on what is practical to create learner-centered experiences that integrate technology.

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Don't end up like Marty with your technology use in the classroom!