Teachers and Digital Natives

      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. 

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.

Different Brain Structures

______________________________________________________

Reference: 

- Prensky, M. (2001) "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" On the horizon 9 (5) 1-6.