Generation Net: It's Time to Make a Change!

The Net generation readings and video clips for Week 2 have been by far my favorite! Students who are growing up in the 21st century are much different from students in previous generations because they are the first generation to grow up in a society that is completely surrounded by technology. These students were born into a world of computers, video games, Ipods, cell phones, and much more. Children of today are digital learners. Much of their research is done using the web, and rather than reading books in a traditional manner, they listen to books on their Ipods or read them using devices such as the Kindle.

As illustrated in A Vision of K-12 Students Today, students spend countless hours playing games, using the internet, texting, instant messaging, and watching television; and although it is not true in all cases, many of these programs can be educational for students. Students feel connected to technology and often feel that their Ipods, cell phones, and social networking sites are an extension of who they are as individuals.
Today's students learn in a completely different way than their teachers learned. In fact, the video also explained that an alarming 76% of today's teachers have never even used blogs, wikis, or other such programs! So how do we as teachers make a change and successfully educate our students of today when we ourselves were taught so differently? Marc Prensky offers many solutions to this very problem in his article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." He believes that we need to teach children how to think on their own and use the web. If children feel so greatly connected to technology, then what better way to teach them than by using technology in our classrooms? Prensky states, "My own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content. After all, it's an idiom with which most of them are totally familiar (4)." It is important to steer away from being what Prensky refers to as a Digital Immigrant. Instead, we must keep an open mind and enable our students to learn in a variety of ways with various technologies. Students learn differently, and educations statistics in the United States show that the old way of teaching is not working! It is time to make a change! Teachers must encourage the use of technology in their classrooms and introduce their students to as much of it as possible. Using different technologies and allowing our students to interact with technology on a regular basis, will create successful, live-long learners who actually enjoy the learning process!