On short notice I was asked to make a presentation at Pine Manor College in Brookline, MA, August 27th. The meeting was a collaborative meeting between faculty from New England Institute of Art and Pine Manor College. I talked about communicating with digital natives. It was more of a lively discussion and it was GREAT to talk to peers since we all are basically the digital immigrants. 🙂
This is the graph I made to begin the discussion. Of course there is much more to digital natives that I did not include here, but that is for another discussion.
Based on this graph of the current ‘learning nature’ of our students, here were my initial questions were based on current challenges teachers face:
- Do digital natives think differently?
- what are the ways we can communicate digitally to digital natives?
- what type of digital media do they know as opposed to what students know?
- do those students who have the skills for gaming and texting also have the skills to use new media?
- how do we try and instill in them the soft skills – ceativity, innovation, discipline, communication, socialization, team work etc. in such an environment?
We have challenges there but we also have opportunities:
- we are all in a learning phase
- we are in a transitional period between old ways of teaching and new, which will determine the future of teaching [because after that, the digital natives will take over and it will be they who are the teachers of the future]