digital natives,digital immigrants

         Are you as an educaton professional, a digital native, or a digital immigrant; have you, as part
of your professional development, made an effort to stay abreast of the technological boom our
classrooms have been experiencing? According to Marc Prensky, in his paper, "Digital Natives,
Digital Immigrants, "Today's students are no longer the students our educational system was designed to teach; they speak a new language, digital technology."
       So, our modern day classrooms have become a situation where the students speak a different
language then their teachers. One need not be an IBM computer programmer to be able to
communicate with these digital native students. However, it becomes the responsibility of all teachers
and prospective teachers to gain some familiarity, and in some cases, expertise in the digital world..
Otherwise, our students will be staring with blank looks, at their teachers while trying to understand
what our digital immigrant teachers are trying to relate.
       All teachers should, as part of their individual professional development plans, include continuing
education classes in computer literacy. Otherwise we risk foriegners trying to teach natives in an
environment that will not be conducive to learning.
REFERENCE: Marc Prensky, (2001), "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants."

BY RICHARD HOBBS, 11/13/2011
CULTURAL DRIVEN POLICY MAKING: This theory that: educational policy making is culturally drive, as opposed tp developing policy based on the needs of the general population.
     Is our educational system misguided in trying to create  education policy based on the needs of a select group of the population as opposed to developing policy based on the needs of the entire population, known as consensus policy making: Do we cheat many, when we try to appease a few? For example: In California,
after the Vietnam war, California experienced  a great influx of southeast Asian immigrants from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. California was required to revamp many of her governmental agencies, especially
education, in an effort to meet the needs of these new immigrants, each with their own diverse culture. I propose that this distracts from and cheats our resident population. This issue is not intended to be a comment on racism or bigotry.
      I believe that even though our country is founded on the premise: "All are welcome, and all are entitled."
This premis is based on the outdated United State's immigration policy: "Give us your poor, downtrodden,
disenfranchised and persecuted."
       Is it not time to re-examine our policy of trying to save the world, especially when this policy negatively impacts her naturalized citizens? Your non-racist comments are invited.