Finally, someone is actually acknowledging why students are so different now. I work in a school that has teachers of all different ages and experience levels. The more experienced teachers, ones who have been there for 15-35 years always seem to complain about everything that the students do or do not do. Interestingly enough I hear less of this type of complaints from the younger teachers. We younger teachers are digital natives. Because of this we are relating to our students better than teachers who have been there for a long time.
My school is extremely fortunate in that we have SMART boards in every classroom. It is absolutely unbelievable how many teachers don't use them. There are many of us that do use them, however it seems that learning to use them has been a big issue for many of the older teachers. They seem to be stuck in their old way of teaching. I know that many of them are trying to use the SMART boards, however it seems so difficult for them to simply navigate around the SMART notebook (the software that comes with the SMART boards). All along I have known that I have an advantage because I have grown up with computers, however I never realized how great that advantage really is.
I felt particularly passionate about one line from Marc Prensky's Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. He states, "Digital Immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can't" (pg 3). This particularly stood out to me because I had an experience where I fought for a child who liked to listen to music while he worked. I was in one of my first meetings as a teacher with a parent, the learning specialists, and all of the students' teachers. The purpose of this meeting was to help the parent better know what her child could do to stay on top of his work and be a better student. At some point in the meeting the head of the learning specialists said that the student should never listen to music while he worked on homework or read. She claimed that there was research that proved that this was in no way beneficial to students. I quietly, but quickly spoke up and explained that I personally need to listen to music while I work or I cannot stay focused. I told them that the music almost acted as a distraction for me. Not a huge distraction that actually took my focus away from my work, but a little something that helped prevent me from becoming distracted from bigger more distracting things in the room. I don't know if the parent listened to me, but I felt it was important to bring it up.
Now that I have read Marc Prensky's two papers on digital natives, I understand why that worked for me and not for others. I am a digital native. I am used to multi-tasking. In high school I would write papers while chatting online, and surfing the internet. My brain is programmed to work like that. I need a slight distraction from my work to keep my brain busy. This allows me to be more efficient in my work than if I were working in a silent room with no other distractions.
