Transcript Slide 1

Communicating with the natives!
Digital Native or Digital Immigrant?
Presented by Karen Stapleton, AIS
Perusing and Pondering Prensky’s Premise
“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp
Which one are you?
Prensky’s case for ‘the natives’ . . .
“Today’s students are no longer the people our educational
system was designed to teach.”
“A really big discontinuity has taken place . . . A ‘singularity’ . . .
there is absolutely no going back.”
“Today’s students . . . Represent the first generation to grow up
with this new [digital] technology”
Prensky’s case for ‘the natives’ . . .
“. . .today’s students think and process information
fundamentally differently from their predecessors”
“Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain
structures”
They are “the native speakers”: the digital world is their
world; they speak its language.
And the rest of us? We are the immigrants!
 Technology is the ‘new world’ for us.
 We have had to learn a new language but speak with an
accent.
 We are not ESL students but TSL students!
 We keep at least one foot in the past by often speaking in an
outdated language to our students.
Digital Natives
Digital Immigrants
Used to receiving information
FAST (“twitch speed”)
 Are used to learning by a
Used to ‘instantaneity’/interactivity
Function best when networked
Like to parallel and multi-task
Prefer graphics before their text
Prefer random access (like
hypertext) and non-linear learning
Thrive on instant gratification and
frequent rewards.
slow pace, methodical, step by
step, one thing at a time, linear
process and structure.
 See learning as serious not fun
Single task focused
Need ‘silence’ or a ‘study’
atmosphere
Assume their students haven’t
changed and can learn by what
worked for them.
Prefer ‘games’ to serious work.
Can learn listening to music,
watching TV
HAVE little patience for lectures
AND???
Prensky recommends . . .
 Learning to communicate in their language
 Changing our methodology  going faster, less step-by-step
and more parallel, random access
 Incorporating both “Legacy” and “Future” content
 Learning “new stuff” and “learning new ways to do old stuff”
 We need to be inventive. eg take a lesson from computer
games!
What does this mean for the teachers?
 Personal impact – we have to change; more flexibility
 Adolescence is a distinct phase; they need to have distinctly
different learning experiences.
 Personal ‘vision’ and understanding of how it is different.
 Change for the teacher as much as the adolescent learner.
 Pedagogical content knowledge to inquiry/curiosity/discovery
 Reconsider our methodology
 Static questions to dynamism, recursivity and discursivity
Impact and implications
Changing the learning environment
e.g.
 Physical classroom layout, set up, organisation
 Use of technology and other resources/ multimodal
 Differentiation and “message abundancy”; pathways for learning
 Group work and teaching strategies/methodology
Impact and implications
New expectations FROM students; new modes of learning
“The young person who watches digital TV, downloads MP3
music onto a personal player, checks email on a personal
organiser and sends symbolised messages to a mobile
phone of a friend will not be satisfied with a 500-word
revision guide for Physics.”
Maureen Walsh, “Literacy in the age of technology”, EQA, Issue One,
Autumn, 2004
Impact and implications
 New modes of language – viewing/representing
 New multimodal texts and communications require
new literacies; a paradigm shift
 New terminology suggests change and development
 New language, vocabulary and spelling/abbreviation
(See Walsh article, Cambridge Dictionary study pages.)
 New ‘assessment’ processes to take account of the changes in
students’ texts and capabilities.
 N.B. Prensky acknowledges there is a loss of “reflective” practices
Interpreting visual images
Current research and visual literacy
 Multimodal texts and the complex relationship between
verbal/visual semiotics
 Multimedia/multimodal texts  multiple meanings and
discourses; new ways of communication
 Gunther Kress  reading images is different process
from reading words
Interpreting visual images
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design
 ‘logic of words’ = time, sequence, clause
structures. Words “tell” the world in a linear,
sequenced way
 ‘logic of image’ = arrangement, display, salient
elements. Images “show” the world in a nonlinear, non-sequential, simultaneous way
Implications for the IT integrator?
 Who are YOUR students?
 What do they need to learn?
How will they learn it? How will you teach it?
 What are YOUR priorities? What are THEIRS?
 Are you a TSL teacher or an IT integrator? Or both?
Good luck!