Communicating with the natives

1
Communicating with the natives!

• Digital Native or Digital Immigrant?
• Presented by Karen Stapleton, AIS

2
Perusing and Pondering Prenskys Premise

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
• http//www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp
• Which one are you?

3
Prenskys case for the natives . . .

• Todays students are no longer the people our
  educational system was designed to teach.
• A really big discontinuity has taken place . . .
  A singularity . . . there is absolutely no
  going back.
• Todays students . . . Represent the first
  generation to grow up with this new digital
  technology

4
Prenskys case for the natives . . .

• . . .todays students think and process
  information fundamentally differently from their
  predecessors
• Different kinds of experiences lead to different
  brain structures
• They are the native speakers the digital world
  is their world they speak its language.

5
And the rest of us? We are the immigrants!

• Technology is the new world for us.
• We have had to learn a new language but speak
  with an accent.
• We are not ESL students but TSL students!
• We keep at least one foot in the past by often
  speaking in an outdated language to our students.

6
(No Transcript)
7
(No Transcript)
8
Prensky recommends . . .

• Learning to communicate in their language
• Changing our methodology ? going faster, less
  step-by-step and more parallel, random access
• Incorporating both Legacy and Future content
• Learning new stuff and learning new ways to do
  old stuff
• We need to be inventive. eg take a lesson from
  computer games!

9
What does this mean for the teachers?

• Personal impact we have to change more
  flexibility
• Adolescence is a distinct phase they need to
  have distinctly different learning experiences.
• Personal vision and understanding of how it is
  different.
• Change for the teacher as much as the adolescent
  learner.
• Pedagogical content knowledge to
  inquiry/curiosity/discovery
• Reconsider our methodology
• Static questions to dynamism, recursivity and
  discursivity

10
Impact and implications

• Changing the learning environment e.g.
• Physical classroom layout, set up, organisation
• Use of technology and other resources/ multimodal
• Differentiation and message abundancy pathways
  for learning
• Group work and teaching strategies/methodology

11
Impact and implications

• New expectations FROM students new modes of
  learning
• The young person who watches digital TV,
  downloads MP3 music onto a personal player,
  checks email on a personal organiser and sends
  symbolised messages to a mobile phone of a friend
  will not be satisfied with a 500-word revision
  guide for Physics.
• Maureen Walsh, Literacy in the age of
  technology, EQA, Issue One, Autumn, 2004

12
Impact and implications

• New modes of language viewing/representing
• New multimodal texts and communications require
  new literacies a paradigm shift
• New terminology suggests change and development
• New language, vocabulary and spelling/abbreviation
  (See Walsh article, Cambridge Dictionary study
  pages.)
• New assessment processes to take account of the
  changes in students texts and capabilities.
• N.B. Prensky acknowledges there is a loss of
  reflective practices

13
Current research and visual literacy
Interpreting visual images

• Multimodal texts and the complex relationship
  between verbal/visual semiotics
• Multimedia/multimodal texts ? multiple meanings
  and discourses new ways of communication
• Gunther Kress ? reading images is different
  process from reading words

14
Gunther Kress and Theo van LeeuwenReading
Images The Grammar of Visual Design
Interpreting visual images

• logic of words time, sequence, clause
  structures. Words tell the world in a linear,
  sequenced way
• logic of image arrangement, display, salient
  elements. Images show the world in a
  non-linear, non-sequential, simultaneous way

15
Implications for the IT integrator?

• Who are YOUR students?
• What do they need to learn? How will they learn
  it? How will you teach it?
• What are YOUR priorities? What are THEIRS?
• Are you a TSL teacher or an IT integrator? Or
  both?
• Good luck!