Friday, March 2, 2012

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants


I can receive information quickly from multiple source, multitasking and do many things in one time; watching TV, talk to my sister doing my homework, and searching the internet. So I consider myself as a digital native student.

Students born roughly between 1980 and 1994 were saddled with the moniker “digital natives” by Marc Prensky. There are other descriptions of this generation as collaborative, optimistic, multitaskers, team-oriented achievers and talented with technology.


According to  Marc Prensky a digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology, and he was  interacting with digital technology from an early age, and he has understand all its concepts. On the other hand, a digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life.



There are many differences between digital immigrants and digital native student. For example, digital Immigrant teachers prefer to get information from text and they receive a text from limited sources. they teach step-by-step , one thing at a time. And they are more serious. On other hands Digital Native students prefer to use picture, sound and video before text. They receiving information fast and from multiple sources. They like to parallel process and multi-task.



Digital immigrant accent refers to the collection of behaviors that represents the older generations. According to Marc Prensky it's when the immigrant foot in the past. There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL).



Hat is the biggest serious problem facing education now a day. Because, our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.




What should happen? Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new? Unfortunately, no matter how much the Immigrants may wish it, it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives will go backwards. In the first place, it may be impossible – their brains may already be different. It also flies in the face of everything we know about cultural migration. Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old. Smart adult immigrants accept that they don't know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate.
Unless we want to just forget about educating Digital Natives until they grow up and do it themselves, we had better confront this issue. And in so doing we need to reconsider both our methodology and our content.
Prensky said; that we have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully. 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.



In my opinion all students now a day's depend on technology in their each things on their life. So, the digital immigrants need to improve them self to use technology with their student.


“How would I use blogs, wikis and delicious with my EFL students?”




Use technology with student is a very useful and helpful tool to help teacher and student to communicate easily in any time. They also can discuss things, submit assignment, and share knowledge. Wiki, Blog, and delicious are some of these technologies teachers could use it with their students. For me I will use it with my student beside other things; class, book …etc.

First of all, I will teach them how to start with these websites.


For blog; starts with write a short paragraph to them and let them to reflect on it by add a comment. Next, I ask them to write a short paragraph about them self and reflect on each other's paragraphs. I think using blog is a good way to help students to develop their writing skills. They also can reflect on what happened on the class and write what they like and dislike.    o


Use wiki with student to upload materials, video, and power point presentation. Also, I will encourage them to uploading their works like; PPT, and a good video that’s they want to share. I maybe give them extra marks for that’s. Divide students into groups maybe will work.



Ask student to keep the sites they think it will help them on Delicious.


For all above websites blog, wiki, and delicious students will show their creativity by decorate the page.
Technology is a part of student life, if we encourage them to use it in a good way it will be very helpful for developing.