Digital Immigrants & Natives

 To integrate technology into today's schools one must be creative to reach students where they are today in their knowledge of technology. A digital immigrant are those teachers who continue to teach how they were taught many moons ago while a digital native are those students who if they are taught with some form of technology such as ipods or computers their attention span is not going to go very far in today's classrooms. When I was in school the only technology I can remember seeing in the classroom was the overhead projector where the teacher (digital immigrant) would place a slide and write in what being taught with a marker. (LOL) That seems so long ago. X's & O's digital immigrants must explore are video games, ipods, using blogs such as we are currently using to empower students to think for themselves. Teachers must allow a child to become creative by their own thought processes versus the teachers former way of thinking.

21st Century Learning

Very interesting, very interesting. The following themes I found apparent across three videos regarding 21st Century Learners were:
Using technology
Promoting students to become creative innovators not only for today's society but tomorrow's as well.
Moving away from the traditional way of teaching students with ever-changing technology being constant
Challenging students
Teaching students how to be critical thinkers.
What is awesome to me is that 21st Century Learners are taught to think, create, analyze, and apply what they learn. We currently live in a society where the media's influence is ever-present in students lives and instead of looking at technology as the enemy, let us look at technology as the tool that will challenge tomorrow's leaders.
So much emphasis is placed on what could go wrong with allowing children to surf the web. But, why not use technology to instill a new approach to doing things. Let's face it technology is here to stay and always improving. What is neat is that we can move away from the mundane ways of teaching on a blackboard to creating lesson plans geared around smartboards, phones, or ipods and capture the attention of students in innovative ways.