Digital Native vs Digital Immigrants

I could not agree more with Marc Prensky: "Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." Our educational system is officially outdated!!
I feel it is possible that their brains are wired differently than ours. It feels like they need constant stimulation and their attention spans are much shorter than the previous generations because they get bored easily if they are not interacting with some kind of screen or device. Older generations can’t understand this because we never experienced that- we had “to learn how to use” the new technologies following someone’s instructions but they just do it intuitively- no directions needed.  I see 3-4 years old using tablets and Iphones like they were born with them, and they think it is a little strange when grandma does not know how to use them.

I can’t relate a little bit to them because when internet came out in the 90s I was living and working in the US after finishing my college Degree, and when I would come back home (Spain) for Christmas and my family did not have internet connection at home –just at work- I would feel so cut off from the rest of the world. How could they live WITHOUT internet? Thinking back I bet I sounded a little “nuts” when I told them I could not believe any person could possible go through their day without internet.

I could not bear with it to the point that I would sneak in my old college library to get in one of the computers to surf the net, chat with my friends from the US, etc. And this was only about missing having a computer with internet connection that I would use at work and home for about  8 hours a day… so I can’t imagine if you are used to have always your Iphone with you, 24/7, and as soon as you step in the classroom, your teacher asks you to shut it off  just to explain you a lesson at a such slow pace that it seems like he/she is moving in slow motion. It really must be painful for the student and honestly, it is painful for the teacher too seeing students who are not motivated  or who get distracted every five minutes. As a teacher, I can see how students multi-task constantly and how they prefer graphics to text and how they are used to receive information really fast. We need to start appreciating these skills and use them to the  students’ advantage and our advantage too. As a result, we will have more dynamic and fun classes where students  are learning in a way that suits them. I do not know about other subjects but foreign languages should be taught in a completely different way to these type of students: you can make them do role plays and record them on video, you can have watch videos of somebody (maybe even the teacher him/herself)  explaining certain grammar structure or cultural issue in a short video (let's not forget they have a short attention span because they capture information fast), they can interact live with students from another school who are native speakers of the language they are learning via Skype, etc… but the evaluation methods and the curricula  NEED TO CHANGE as well.

In my opinion, it is the teachers who need to react and change the way we teach; even if I tried to use videos with my students I still feel that the way I am required to teach does not fit their learning needs at all. The only problem is that they will be tested the old way,  so you prepare them to pass the test- the whole educational system needs to be re-designed: the teaching techniques and tools but also the curricula and the students’ evaluation methods.

 It is true that we, Digital Immigrants have an accent and our students do not but that does not mean we could not work with each other just fine; and maybe even have them teach us a few things. If you ask your students to make a video and you have never edited one yourself, they will probably know how to do it and can teachyou a thing or two about it – that does not mean you are less of a teacher. We are experiencing a crash among different generations but that does not mean we can work together to accomplish some common goals: teaching and learning useful things for this new digital world that is shaping before our eyes as we go.