Article Assessment 1

Listen to the Natives

Overview

The Educational Leadership article Listen to the Natives by Marc Prensky highlighted the need for teachers, schools, and parents to listen to their children's technological knowledge and to use that at the primary mode of education. The article refers to children as the new 'digital natives', whereas people not born into the technological age as being 'digital immigrants'. If we are to keep digital technology and programming out of our students curriculum, we are not only boring them, but also doing them a considerable disservice for jobs in the future.

We should be teaching our students how to be responsible global, independent, and creative citizens. Instead of being babysitters who give busywork, teachers need to be emphatic stewards of students in their quests to improve, create, and develop knowledge.

Reference Points

1. Students today learn different than us. They cannot use our framework as a training guide to meet their educational needs.
2. Radical solutions, such as learning algebra via computer games, are needed.
3. Teachers need to value and learn from what their students know, and be able to put engagement over content.
4. Young people are already employing many of the key skills we are trying to teach them: via technology.
5. Students are fully engaged in the 21st century outside the classroom. We now need that in shcools as well.
6. We need to collaborate with students in all aspects of the curriculum, organization, discipline, and assignments.
7. To avoid herding our students, we need personalized, adaptable instruction and allowing students to self select their learning groups.
8. Digital tools (including cell phones, MP3 players, and computers) need to be integrated into the classroom and daily work.
9. What students learn in school today should be up to date information and above all, relevant.
10. If we do not listen to the digital natives we teach, we will leave our students behind, both physically and mentally.

Reflection

While I see many, many valid points to the this article, I also have many issues with it. Having graduated from high school in 2003, I consider myself on the cusp of being a digital native. My parents had internet since I was 11, and the transition from cassettes to cd's to audio files and external storage devices seemed very seamless in my eyes. Students need to able to both live within the digital world, but also outside of it. Prensky details how students today are doing all the major life skills we have been trying to teach them...communicating (via IM'ing), sharing (via blogs), socializing (via chat rooms) and collecting (downloads). But what about in personal contact? Can they interact well with bosses and co-workers? Will they always carry a calculator with them to the grocery store? My point is, not every thing in life can be digital (at least not yet).

Prensky suggests students learning a subject like algebra by an on-line game...if they beat the game, they pass the class. He also suggests having cameras in every classroom so administrators and parents can see what has gone on in the classroom. What will they be looking at, students sitting on computers? Of course there is also the issue of access....some students, frankly, don't have high-tech cell phones, internet, or even computers. How will the school pay for all these items.....does it reduce money from P.E. or home economics?

Are we beginning to sacrifice students health (both physically and mentally) for the chance for them to be entertained by their studies? Children today are more allergy prone (because they get outside less and no longer 'eat dirt' as infants), they are more afraid and these knowledgeable about simple natural items (like spiders and oceans), and understand less and less about where our food and drinking water comes from, or where our wastes go. Also, we are encouraging students to have shorter and shorter attention spans. Why can't we get them involved in projects for the sheer joy of discovery, not simply because it's entertainment? Prensky, who according to his website, is a 'visionary' (www.marcprensky.com) suggests 24 hour unsupervised computer labs for students. At Eagle River High, there used to be student computers in public spaces, but after two years these had to be removed, because of vandalism issues. I wonder, has Marc Prensky ever been in a large modern public school?

On the other hand, ignoring new media, technology, and digital programming in schools would be a considerable disservice to our students. According to the popular "Did You Know?" video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U), we are currently trying to prepare our students for jobs that do not yet exist, to solve problems that we don't yet realize are there. We will always be striving for better schools, which integrate more and more curriculum and activities that meet students needs and prepare them for the future. By adding digital assignments, but not ignoring values, health, the environment, or core subjects, we would be propelling our students into a self-assured and prepared future.