This is Education: When Teaching, Please "Speak Digital"

As a “Digital Immigrant”, I am blessed to have the opportunity to be a part of this new world. I am guilty of, and can identify with Marc Prensky’s overview of my generation’s need to print out everything. (I get dizzy reading past the first two lines of text on a computer.) The “native” speakers of this “language” we call digital have in fact acquired a new language that today’s educators must learn quickly or be forced to return to their original place of origin-the Land of Obscurity (Ob for short). I can see the newly posted signs in my head, “No Digital-No Service” or “Only Digital Spoken Here”.

Teachers today do have to “…learn to communicate the language and style of their students” as Prensky stated. I had a friend tell me the other day that she has a hard time listening to a speaker in a class she takes because she doesn’t like the facilitator’s accent and vernacular. Educators have to be able to get students’ attention and maintain it too. How many of us judge others in the first few seconds of them speaking? We surmise a person’s intelligence or ignorance in the first few moments of hearing them speak. Likewise, students will judge us by how well we speak “digital”, as well as how we use it in the classroom. Students are learning and processing information differently than their predecessors. They learn “by doing”, according to Ben McNeely, and they want to use technology not for technology’s sake, but to support their learning according to Greg Roberts.

I often find myself using two “languages” when teaching first through eighth graders at a local learning center. I find that I still use archaic terms such as “dialing a number” or “taping” something. At home and school, digital options should not be seen as privileges to be given and taken away as rewards or punishments, but as a necessity of life-a way to support learning as Roberts notes. Teachers have to want to be able to motivate students and not stifle their learning.

Using technology is akin to sex education. If parents and teachers don’t teach it to their children, someone else will. Okay, maybe that’s a little drastic in comparison, but the concept is the same. These “emotionally open” students, as Diana and James Oblinger call them, are eager and vulnerable to all that’s out there. The adults need to take notice and learn what’s out there as well. Educators have to use this to their advantage and seize all teachable moments. “Peer-to-peer teaching” goes on around us. It’s time for educators to step up and get in on the “lesson”.

While it is an honor to be a part of such a new culture, I’m glad that my original language still has something to offer this internet generation- I’m sort of bi-lingual if you will. I bring with me a sense of awareness and precaution. My generation knew when to “turn someone off”; when to put up our guard and be aware of our surroundings. We knew not to “talk to strangers” and that no one aside from really close friends should know your "address" or where you live-things all too forgotten in this cyber world. The Oblingers call this generation of sociable, tech savvy students, the “Net Generation”. This generation is also marked by the ability to multi-task, parallel process and demand immediacy in all they do. My generation still has to offer them patience and a sense that being able to read what you write (as far as the conventions go) far outweighs the quick time one takes to get it out to the reader. For those of us that were told that we “go to school to learn and not socialize”, it’s difficult for us to understand that this new generation does just the opposite.

I do believe; however, that with all that Digital Immigrants have to offer, we still need to meet the needs of the students. For these students who don't even consider what they are doing "technology", educators must do their part and learn the new technology as well as how to use it as a learning tool in the classroom. It will only be a matter of time before the “Digital Natives” are fed up with the unintelligible mumblings of the "immigrants" and post a sign outside the windows of our schools that read, “This is Education: When Teaching, Please Speak Digital”.