Week+4+(February+1,+2010.)

This week's reading:

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
(Marc Prensky)

The reading this week started out with an ** overview **of what we have been discussing in class since day 1: the ** difference between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants **. While most of the information was familiar to me, I found the second half of the article really interesting because of the concrete evidence Prensky offered. He first talked about a group of professors who wanted help marketing their new engineering software. In order to make it interesting to new consumers, Prensky's team suggested they ** organize the software like a game, similar to Doom or Quake **. The professors had a really hard time imagining how to bring the software up to a Digital Native speed, using quick videos and graded tasks. However, they did eventually learn how to adapt the software to the new way of thinking and interacting, and they found it to be extremely successful. They called it "The Monkey Wrench Conspiracy" (image accessed at http://www.games2train.com/site/html/tutor.html)

Prensky uses this story to illustrate how ** anyone who is motivated and has some imagination can use technology to make new information interesting **. He relates this story to teachers who believe that technology simply can't help them teach their subject matter. I was totally on board with his comment about ** teachers being "dumb and lazy" by claiming that the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach. ** How obtuse do you have to be ignore the lives of your students and their needs?

As a ** final thought **, I'd like to write that I believed myself to be rather Digitally retarded before this class began. I have so many friends who can write their own software, find web resources faster than I can, and who feel super comfortable using iPhones and Blackberries. However, in this class I have actually begun to think that **I am much closer to being a Digital Native than a Digital Immigrant**. For example, I pick up on the new software we use in class really quickly and become very comfortable using it after a first trial. I also realized that I do rely on the internet for research before I look for books and I always use YouTube to find out about new things (for example, I once YouTubed a video on "how to cut men's hair" because I wanted to give my boyfriend a haircut). This class and the readings, thus far, have showed me that I'm not really far behind in digital knowledge. It's learning about new software and how to use it in teaching that I need to become familiar with, and I'm excited about doing this!