Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants part 2

1. What do DI have to reconsider for teaching DN

1.1. They need to think about two items in teaching

1.1.1. Content

1.1.1.1. After the digital “singularity” there are now two kinds of content

1.1.1.1.1. “Legacy” content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc – all of our “traditional” curriculum. It is of course still important, but it is from a different era. Some of it will continue to be important, but some will become less. This involves a major translation and change of methodology

1.1.1.1.2. “Future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them. This involves all that plus new content and thinking

1.1.2. Methodology

1.1.2.1. Today´s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is important, or of good thinking skills. It means going faster, less step-by step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things.

2. Example

2.1. A group of professors developed a new computer-aided design software for mechanical engineers. Their creation was so much better than what people were using that they had assumed everyone would adopt it. But instead they encountered a lot of resistance, because of the product´s extremely steep learning curve (the software contained hundreds of new buttons, options and approaches to master.)

2.2. Their marketers, however, had a brilliant idea. The users of CAD software were almost exclusively male engineers between 20 and 30 so, they decided to turn the learning into a video game. They invented and created for them a computer game for learning called The Monkey Wrench Conspiracy which turned out to be a succes

3. What DI think about DN

3.1. They don't believe their students can learn succesfully while watching TV or listening to music

3.2. They think learning can't be fun

3.3. Immigrants think this because the educational system was different before and they are used to learning in a different way

4. Why are Dn skeptical about learning?

4.1. Often, their Digital Immigrant instructors make their education not worth paying attention compared to everything else they experience