Frankly this is total bubpkis. Yes, children who grow up surrounded by the constant use of tech are much more likely to expect technology to be integrated in their lives, but they have to learn how to use it effectively, just like any user. I spent the last two years teaching 7th graders (these kids all were born between 2002 and 2005) who would be the perfect example of digital natives. To them cell phones are common, streaming is the way to watch TV shows, and wireless networks are the norm. However, they did not automatically know how to use technology, I still had to teach them. They constantly complained that the school network was so slow, and I made an offhand comment one day that it was their own fault for sneakily streaming youtube videos when they should have been working. Blank looks all around. They had no idea what streaming data meant, or how it worked. I had to teach them a mini lesson on how data is transmitted over the internet. Once they understood, their off task streaming almost disappeared. They didn't know how the technology worked, so they had unrealistic expectations for how it would perform.
What this means it that if I expect my student to use technology effectively in their scholastic activities, I will have to teach them how it works, and how to use it. Since my students have technology standards they will be assessed with; tech must be a part of my teaching. The big question is how to make time to teach the tech. A teacher's most precious resource is time, we could cure all ills and teach all skills if we just had enough of it. It seems to me that the most effective way to do this would be to build it into the rest of what I'm teaching.
I plan to teach technology all year long, like any other skill to be taught I'll start small and increase the difficulty. One way to do this would be to incorporate digital tools into the getting to know you games/activities we all use at the beginning of the year. These are almost never graded, and this would be a great low pressure situation in which to teach basic student tech skills like, building and sharing a google doc, how to check your daily agenda, how to submit a digital assignment, ect. Once students can be reasonably expected to know how to use these basic tech tools then I can start building on them by having them perform increasingly complex tech uses like having them collaborate digitally with students in another location (another school, ect.)
Many schools also have some sort of intervention/enrichment time in their schedule, one way to use this time would be to run a typing skills workshop for students. Many schools do not currently teach keyboarding as a skill, I would like to offer this as my workshop activity, maybe even find a way to gameify it so students can have fun learning to type.
Another aspect that affects the Digital Native is that technology costs money. A large portion of students in my local district don't have access to many of these digital tools that so many take for granted these days. Internet access costs money, devices cost money, and thanks to planned obsolescence need to be constantly ungraded and replaced. The same way we talk about the poorer portions of our population living in Food Deserts, so too do many of out students live in Technology Deserts. Their families cannot afford regular access to technology.
TAGS: 702, HW, Digital Literacy, Digital Native