I believe that I am a digital native according to Mark Prensky's explanation. I also believe that many of my peers would consider themselves the same. We have grown up with technology being introduced to us in school as well as at home. We were taught by teachers to use technology and begin to feel comfortable to use it as a resource for information. As a college of education student it is a requirement to have a lap top making myself and other students in our program familiarize themselves to not only a desk top, but a lap top.
I feel that children are learning a lot through the use of technology. They are able to play literacy 'games', such as listening to stories online and then answering questions or going through the letters of the alphabet.
I feel that since technology is forever changing not only are children and adults who didn't grow up with technology emergent learners, but we all are and will forever be. Every year there is something new to enhance our lives through the use of technology. For some I believe that it is harder than others though to learn how to use the technology. I personally have a hard time learning new technology because I am unfamiliar with technology terms. I feel this relates to ELL because if they are having a hard time learning English and technology description is all in English it would create a problem for them. Yet, at the same time I know that I personally can use the pictures that help describe things or are a icon for a certain program to help me figure things out. I feel that the pictures would help ELL as well.
As we discuss in class it is very important to make sure we are using a lot of teaching styles I find this connects to technology because when using the computer for example you have text, pictures and sound.
According to Mark Prensky's explanation I would also consider myself a digital native. I also agree that many of our peers would also consider themselves a digital native.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it is important to include technology in the classroom because of the fact that there is different learning styles. As a teacher, it is our job to support these mulitple learning styles. One way we can do this is by incorporating technology into different lessons or homework assignments. As a teacher, it is also our job to "switch it up" a bit and not also require or use technology in every learning aspect.
I use technology and am pretty confident with using it (grew up with it) but technology is not my best friend. There might be students in my classroom who feel the same way, so it is my job to make sure not to overload students with technology. At the same time I can not let my opinion of technology keep me from using it in the class.