The Digital DivideICT integration in schools

Jane Ross 2008

ICT Competencies

•Where do you place yourself on the ICT line of competency?

some integrated

•WHAT IS ICT?

•1. Information Computer Technology

•Two interpretations:

infused

•2. Internet Communication Technology.

Marc Prenskyhttp://marcprensky.com

•Take a moment to write them down and share them with the person next to you.

•What did you find the most interesting about the Prensky articles?

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

The Natives have grown up surrounded by and using digital tools.

Without these tools they cannot do everyday tasks.

Digital Natives are our teenagers.In my opinion, SMP and below for National Plus

schools are pure Digital Natives.

We are the Digital Immigrants.

๏ That assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are different.

Digital Natives๏ Our students have changed radically. Today’s students

are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

๏ The arrival of the Internet has created the biggest generation gap since rock and roll.

๏ Today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently.

๏ Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been.

Digital Immigrant Digital Native

Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their

Digital Immigrant educators learn the new?

What do you think?

So what should happen?

We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels,

using our students to guide us.

Marc Prensky

Why?

The brain constantly reorganizes itself all our child

and adult lives, a phenomenon technically

known as neuroplasticity.

Linear thought processes that dominate educational systems now can actually retard learning for brains developed through game

and Web-surfing processes on the computer.

Children raised with the computer - think differently from the rest of us. They develop

hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures

were parallel, not sequential.

What About Attention Spans? We hear teachers complain so often about the Digital Natives’ attention spans - is it really true?

Sure they have short attention spans - for the old ways of learning, says a professor.

Traditional schooling provides very little of this compared to the rest of their world.

Their attention spans are not short for games or for anything else that actually interests them.

Digital Natives crave interactivity—an immediate response to their each and every action.

So it generally isn’t that Digital Natives can’t pay attention, it’s that they choose not to.

What does this mean?

๏ Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

Frontline Documentary

First Video

Second Video

What are the connections between this film and

Marc Prensky’s articles?

How do you use technology in your school? Discuss

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

We need to think of ICT as a tool, not something to be learned.

Stand alone computer lessons are no longer effective.

Think of the computer as a pencil.

How would it be if our students had to wait once a week to use a pencil

We need to aim towards a paperless classroom.

This indicates that we are using technology.

This is me giving out my Grade 3 homework.

We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels,

using our students to guide us.

How I have tried to accommodate Prensky’s

theory in my teaching practice.What’s a blog?

Two classes two blogs 60,000 kilometers apart ...

A blog is an online journal, a website, a portfolio, an online identity ...

What do you need to create a blog?

My Grade 3 class blog http://mrsjane3.blogspot.com

Grade 5 http://mrsjane5.blogspot.com

A computer, an internet connection. Blogging is free! Blogging is simple and it’s

a great way to give students an online experience.

So what can you do?

Read Prensky’s latest article Turning On the Lights

Make a blog for your school and encourage your teachers to make a

class blog.

Questions?