Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Instead of discussing how I would use one of the different instructional models I have read about, I decided to blog this time about the article "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants."  I found this article to be very informative about how students today are different than the students years ago.  I liked how the article titles students today as Digital Natives because they are native speakers in the digital world.  Also, the article brought up teachers that have been teaching for awhile should be titled Digital Immigrants because they have learned like all immigrants to adapt to the digital world as an adult.  Being a younger teacher, I feel that I am in the middle because in the latter part of my schooling I was exposed to the digital world and it is more comfortable to me to include it in my teaching.  However, I believe that I need to keep in mind that the Digital Natives that I am teaching like to receive information fast and multi-task.  When I teach my lessons I tend to take time explaining each part or step and now I realize that I may be losing my learners by doing this.

I just found many "aha" moments in this article and I am going to post it in our teacher lounge at school so that my colleagues will have a chance to see our students in a new light.

Teacher Work Sample Insights and Instructional Strengths/Weaknesses

While completing the Teacher Work Sample, I have been able to reflect on the instructional strategies I have been using in my classroom.  I have found that I am really good at creating pre-assessments and implementing them with my students.  This process has showed me new ways of creating pre-assessments and the importance of analyzing the data collected in order to make sure that I have appropriate learning goals for my students.  Also, I have found that I am able to create learning goals based on the standards, but I struggle to find activities that fit with the learning goals.  My last "aha" has been that in order to be an effective teacher I need to spend more time on planning instructional strategies that are appropriate for the students in my class AND the learning goals that I am trying to have each of my students master.