Embracing New Literacies Fostered by "Digital Natives"

In looking at the Pensky article on Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives, I can definitely understand why there is a frustration of teachers when trying to bring in new technologies to students. In many ways, the new technologies that the teachers are trying to incorporate are already behind where most "digital natives" are on in their use of technology. We tend to get frustrated because they seem bored when we are teaching a subject, but in many ways, it isn't from the fact that what we are teaching them is boring them but the way that we are teaching it to them is not "active" enough. This is due to the fact that children today tend to process information in a vastly different way than we as students used to only a short time ago. By making some teachers try to embrace these new technologies, it can foster some frustration because we can have such a difficult time learning it while the student can pick up the program with ease. If there is to be some change in the way that we teach with new technologies, we must find a middle ground to help the teachers intergrate it effectively in their teaching while also keeping the students actively engaged in the lesson that is being taught. It is not something that can be done overnight, but with time and resources, it can become a reality.

In Roblyer and Bennett, the idea of visual literacy is a very interesting concept. Though I don't agree that most students have a difficulty in "filtering" out the digital messages in their use of media, I think the problem mainly stems with their focus on the task at hand. Students today can focus on a wider variety of tasks than we did just a short time ago. They need to get their "tech fix" on a quicker basis. I see this happen all the time when kids start researching information on the web. Rarely do they spend more than a minute on a site before they quickly move to the next. When I was growing up, downloading a page used to take at least a minute before it would load, and we thought that was quick. We need as educators to teach the students to not just focus on the visual content but what is actually being said and taught in the resources. In the end, we have to look to the middle ground as teaching as a digital immigrants and learning as a digital native. As comfort levels can become more apparent, it will not only make the lessons more adaptable for the teacher but also more useful in how it can be learned by the student.