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."