Digital Immigrant

I'm certainly a Digital Immigrant.  I consider myself to be one because I didn't learn anything about the technology we use today, until I was an adult.  I graduated from high school in 1996 in Grand Junction, CO, which is a rural area of Western Colorado.  Maybe computers hadn't made it out that way?  Just kidding.  Sure there were computers then, however students didn't use them in the high school setting.  I never used a computer much as a kid because we did not have one at home.

All my experiences with technology to this point is as a student.  I have not yet had any experience as a teacher.  However when I become a teacher I'm going to need to be better with technology.  Right now I'd say my grasp of technology is very basic.  I really didn't use any technology such as computers until I was in college as an undergradute. 

When I was in high school from 1992-1996 I rarely used a computer at school.  I don't remember seeing them in the library (that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't there though).  I can remember taking Keyboarding class my Junior year and using the old school typewriters.  We used the white tape on the paper to erase spelling errors and grammatical errors.  You don't see that anywhere, anymore!  I'm really dating myself here I assume.  I remember having a Writing 101 class my Freshman year in college (1996) and the professor saying it was okay to write a paper by hand, no type needed.  I remember the first time I used the internet was at the University of Oregon in 1998.  I know the internet was around for a couple years before this, however I didn't receieve the news it existed until that year.  I remember being really confused about how it worked.  It was totally foreign to me.  But I was intrigued.  This is the point in learning for me that Marc Prensky refers to in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.  He states, "those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become facinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants" (pg. 1&2).  It ws at this moment I went from a digital nothing to a Digital Immigrant.  Discovering the internet revolutionized my learning as a student.  I no longer had to pore through books at the library for information, I could now look online!  I know "Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast" (pg. 2).  But I was not, so this blew me away.

I don't think this article changed my mind about the use of technology in my future classroom.  Prensky states "Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for the students now" (pg. 3).  I'm a Dugital Immigrant and I don't feel this way.  I know that technology today is the only way to go when it comes to educating my students.  I cannot get away with using outdated ideas with them because they are Digital Natives.  In order to teach Digital Natives, I'm going to have to be one myself.  I'll use it every day in my classroom.  I'll use ELMO's and power points.  The only reluctance I'd have would be if I didn't know how to use it.  I'll try to avoid that by learning everything I possibly can.