Talking Points ( Reflection)

REFLECTION

The article “Digital natives, Digital immigrants” by Marc Prensky was a very interesting that article that I was able to relate to 100%. The whole article reminded me of when I was in high school. I had teachers who were stuck in their old ways of teaching, and others who were trying to bring more technology into the classroom. I found that I had a much harder time learning when I was asked to just read something and memorize it, but when it was put in the form of technology in the form of game or computer program I retained the information much better. Growing up in the time that I did I found myself very confused. I had people telling me that because I had difficulty learning through reading and direct instruction I was lazy, and I believed them. People have been learning this way for hundreds of years, why doesn’t it work for me? After reading this article and taking into consideration the massive change in technology recently I see that I’m not alone. This article is all about the drastic differences that have occurred in the upbringing of kids in the last 20 years. Kids today have completely different learning styles; in fact our brains are wired differently than adults. It makes me think about how teachers are not even equipped to teach today’s youth. It’s like when your parents get frustrated trying to use a computer and you come over and immediately know how to fix it. Today’s world is technologically based and if we tried to teach our parents using only technology they would be screwed. But this is what is happening in today’s schools, kids have technology rich minds and teachers are speaking a foreign language when they ignore that. This article relates to me because I can take all this into consideration when I am addressing youth in the future. I’m sure the way technology is advancing there minds will be even more tech savvy than my own. But I will stay up to date with all the new technology and learn how to use it well. This way I will be able to communicate in a language they can fully understand so they can get the most out of there learning experience.

Something that I plan to bring up in class is how youth today is even more technology based than we were. My little sister is in eighth grade and all here friends have iphones and have access to millions of apps. This is something not even we had I remember in eighth grade when the first iPod came out and if you had a phone it was a flip phone. In less than a decade we have come a long long way. It will be interesting to see if we find ourselves speaking a different language just as teachers are doing now because of how fast technology is taking over.