Palfrey, admits that digital natives often connected to educational practices. Schools often feels pretty much as if we have brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them. In today's student have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, not simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornment, or styles, as has happened between generations previously.
A really big discontinuity has taken place. Palfrey continue to elaborate that students born after 1980 represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. Students have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all other toy tools of the digital age. Today's average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading but over 10,000 hours playing video games(Palfrey,2008). The question is what are some of the disciplines that leadership must implement to channel this digital generation's ideas into a practical knowledge base in the classrooms?
Here is where leadership have the opportunity to utilize creativity to indulge this digital natives population by engaging them in a structured learning environment to enhance their skills.
The opportunity also must be focus on cultivating a new trend in merging cultures and promoting methods that worked for teachers to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students.
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Learning to communicate with this new generation will be a major component of effectively negotiating the transformations the education system needs to address current concerns. We should not underestimate the power of communication. We can use constructive communication to edify our young people and guide them toward a shared vision, or we can use it to further alienate them and widen the generation gap.
ReplyDeleteAs educators we address the needs of our students. The digital natives have needs that may be unique to digital immigrants. We should build on the strengths of this new generation to prepare them for the future workforce. We must ensure that they have strong analytical tools to go with their tech savy tools.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Mary and Zwanda, effectively learning to communicate with this generation is critical. I believe they want to engage and are looking to us to reach out and connect with them.
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