There is a common demarcation made of two categories of individuals in the world today: Digital natives and digital immigrants. These are grouped essentially basing on the way they perceive and interact with digital media with the 'immigrants' (the older generation) failing to adapt to the rapid change in technology and the 'natives' (the younger generation) adapting at such a speed that they find it difficult to excel academically using the outdated teaching methods of the day used by their older digital immigrant ancestors. The gap created has made most of the teachers to defensively stick to their 'old ways of doing things' because of the fear of being embarrassed by their rather limited knowledge new digital technologies and how to effectively make use of it in the teaching learning process. They have in so doing forced their learners to abandon rich sources of knowledge causing their young minds to shut out whatever inspiration had lain dormant inside them. This has caused many of the learners to fall on the way side and not realise their full potential.
I happen to be one of those teachers who handles a class that I am confident to use digital media in (I am telling the truth here). This is because I applied myself a lot into digital media and tried my level best to amass knowledge about ICT until now. In my experience I have realised that learners actually have unique interests, styles of learning and speeds of learning among others. Non of them is a born failure. By you interacting with them, you get to realise that they are able to recreate new things even without you giving in-depth guidance on a matter or concept. I have had cases were I thought I would take a long time to teach a particular concept but when I set learners in constructive groups I saw brains recreate things in ways I had never imagined. This happened one time when in a science lesson I wanted to introduce observation skills using an application which they accessed in their groups. Like a game, they were quickly engrossed into the activity and shortly had completely perceived what I had wanted to introduce.
Looking at my experience and comparing it with the content of lesson one course 4, I have this to say:
Schools have stripped kids off their best method of learning by stopping technologies with good content in a bid to 'protect the children from the internet'. Only libraries and classrooms offer information and there is a limited participation gap because most of the learning styles and interests are not catered for. Teachers need to relate what is in the classroom with what is in the learners environment using different digital tools used collaboratively to promote social skills while also prompting creativity in the classroom. This will avoid bad behavior like cyber-bullying because students will be allowed to work in social groups where they responsibly share what they have constructed and remain accountable for both their content and their friends contents which they have access to change.
We should begin to move away from the world of digital natives and digital immigrants and know that best learning takes place when adults and young people relate in new roles. There is need for connection of communities of learners and communities of teachers so as to allow sharing of credible information even if teachers are afraid to do this. Teachers and learners should move from being autonomous to becoming part of a social network.
We need to create a paradigm shift in the way we think out the matter. Creativity is about remixing what is done into something new. This can begin by using games designed for local situation which should enable problem solving skills to be built among others
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