Nowadays, teachers have the responsibility to adapt and change their approaches,
methods, contents and teaching material so as to keep Digital Native students
engaged and motivated. All teachers have to bear in mind that students are constantly changing. In present day the changes are influenced by the arrival and rapid dissemination of new digital technologies. Because of this,
teachers have to include in their lesson planning the use of technologies.
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| Digital Native |
The
main reason is that the newest generation of students were born and grew up surrounded by technological
devices (television, tablets, video games, computer games, etc.) Another reason,
as Prensky (2001) said, is that “as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the
sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process
information fundamentally differently" and this leads into a different brain
structure (p. 1). Some other reasons are that students receive information really
fast, prefer games instead of traditional work and they are multi-taskers. In
addition to this, teachers cannot expect that students adapt themselves to his
/her old-fashioned methodology; that is to say, digital natives will not go
backwards and it is the teacher who has to approach them. For these reasons,
teachers who were not born surrounded by technologies, have to invent Digital
Native methodologies so as to approach students' necessities and
make the teaching and learning processes much more engaging.
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| Different Brain Structures |
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Reference:
- Prensky, M. (2001) "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" On the horizon 9 (5) 1-6.
