Monday, June 29, 2009

Digital Natives

“Today’s students, of almost any age, are far ahead of their teachers in computer literacy.” (National Educational Technology Plan, 2005) (Richardson, 2006: p. 6)

Technology has become an indispensable tool in the education of today’s students. William Winn, Director of the Learning Center of the University of Washington, believes that years of computer use creates children that
“think differently from us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential” (Prensky, 2001a).
In other words, today’s students may not be well-suited to the more linear progression of learning that most educational systems employ. This is something that we as teachers need to address in terms of our teaching pedagogy.

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