Digital Natives

After reading the article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, my first thoughts about the use of technology in teaching was like whoa!. How can we, the digital immigrants, succeed in a world of digital natives that are so far advanced than those that need to teach various skills.  Then as I thought longer about it I realized that we can if we are open to it.  The main differences among the two groups are that immigrants learn the new language in the way they were taught.  Whereas natives learn it in a more direct and adaptive way.  So as teachers, we must accept the differences and learn to become more adaptive ourselves in order to properly teach these digital natives.  When I was in school the beginning of the computer age began with things like green screened apple computers.  Which for us was best used to play the game Oregan Trail.  Which today is still a personal favorite.  If we are to succeed at teaching the ever growing digital native, we as teachers need to be prepared to seek out new and digitally acceptable teaching methods and find ways to intergrate the tools that these natives are accustom to using.  This may require more work on our parts as teachers, but really when have we not had to spend our time working to be a success at our profession.