LAI 590

I had never heard of the concept of "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants" until this module's readings. The second I started reading Marc Prensky's articles though, the whole idea clicked and actually made sense. Digital natives are those who have lived their whole lives surrounded by technology. Digital immigrants are those who have adopted technology and it's language later in their lives. I would consider myself a digital immigrant. I still remember growing up when my family got dial-up internet. My sister and I thought it was the coolest thing. I also remember having a MySpace profile, something that is completely irrelevant now. The first iPod that I got for Christmas--it was a brick compared to the iPod's children have today. All of these things may date me (even though I am only 23!) but I have adopted the new ways of technology and forced myself to learn them. Gee uses the word "practice" to explain how immigrants can learn th...

When I first thought about this analogy, I was lost. Today's learner is not typical. Today's learner is evolving and thinking in ways never possible before. The more I thought about my students in my classroom and myself as a graduate student now, a learner is like a flower. I chose to a flower because flowers are always growing and also dying and evolving into something new. In George Siemens article "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" , Gonzalez says: "The 'half-life of knowledge' is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago." I felt that this quote perfectly described today's society and also today's learner. We are constantly evolving and changing what we know and the way we learn so that we can keep current. For example, I just attended a training on using my Promethean Board last year. I just received an email that the software has ch...