Taking a traditional activity and turning it to a 21st century Brain!

 It is so quick to label a student with ADD/ADHD in so many schools . On pg. 7, Prensky writes, "Is it that Digital Natives can't pay attention, or that they choose not to?"    This questions keeps spinning around in my head. Especially when he writes " Their attention spans are not short for games, for example, or for anything else that actually interest them ...... So it generally isn't that Digital Natives can't pay attention, it's that they choose not to." (pg.18)

When I read this, I thought back to the game that I constantly played when I came home from school. It was called "The Island of Dr. Brain," and it was in a floppy disk! I credit this game to teaching me problem solving skills and critical thinking skills. I coudn't learn these skills at schools because everything was lecture, and as an ELL student it was really hard to understand what my teacher wanted. But the lecture made us, fidgety, we were bored and could not sit still. We didn't have ADD, we were just bored and not motivated to learn the skill. The lectures and assingments that we once had to endure in our classrooms need to stop and be turned into a modern approach.

Take the traditional geometry lesson of learning angles and lines. We get a book, we open the page, and we look at the picture and label, right angle, obtuse angle, or acute angle. Identify and write perpendicular line, parallel line, or intersecting lines. Nowadays, if we try this lesson in our classroom, I think every single student in the classroom will develop a case of ADD, and will choose not to pay attention.

So let's take this lesson into the 21st centry brain, and have the students get into groups and provide each group with a camera. Have them go around the school and take snapshots of various angles and lines that they find around the school. Once that is finished, have the groups upload their pictures and showcase them into some sort of presentation for the class using flickr, power point, voice thread, etc. Have them play with these forms of media sharing beforehand and let them experiment with it. 

In Mark Bauerlein's introduction on pg: xiv he states, " One of the dangers of the Digital Age is that technology changes so rapidly that it clouds our memory of things as they existed but a few years past. ....... And if that's true, then the outlook we adopt now, even at the cutting edge of technology, may have little bearing upon ordinary experience ten years hence. So whatever it is that we teach, we need to make sure that we apply the use of technology as a problem solving approach. We need to be focusing on higher order thinking to make sure they know how to approach something that is unknown, because in reality we are preparing our kids on how to use pieces of technology that have not been invented yet. 

How is you teaching?

 Is there something that we did or read that sparked something in you..  and made you think - I could be doing something different that would make me more effective in my job, my life, or my role as a student?  


There are many things that made reflect on technology and learning from section one. However, I really enjoyed reading Marc Prensky essays over digitial natives/digital immigrants as well as do they really think differently? because I was able to relate my teaching and the way that I learned when I was younger through his reading. 


In regards to my teaching, Prensky presented a lot of point of views that challenged the way I view my students and my instruction, as well as how I see other educators in my school view our students. On pg. 6 he writes "Digital immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the immigrants) can't."   This struck out to me because on my first year of teaching, I found myself getting in this frame of mind that because I couldn't do it, there is no way my students wouldn't be able to, and that is far from the truth. I grew up in the time that when it was time to study and learn, everything was turned off, the only thing you had was your notes, pencil, and paper, and no form of distraction. So I subconsciously tried to make my instruction that way. The students needed to sit quietly to listen, with no distractions, because it was time to learn. To me it seemed almost impossible to be really be able to learn something if you did not have your attention fully on it. But the digital age has changed that. I was surprised by the research study that Marc talked about on pg. 18, with the children who watched Sesame Street with toys, and one with no toys. It was incredible that both groups retained the same amount of information. That at such an early age these students are already picking and choosing what information to listen to, and what is important. And most of all they are showing us that they can multitask. Now, I even feel silly just for even once having this thought since I am sitting here writing this blog, listening to TV, texting, flipping through my book, and making sure that my tank of a puppy does't chew up anymore of my shoes! The amazing is that I am being more productive now, then when I sit with no "distractions." So is this my digital immigrant  brain adapting and re-learning, and forming new connections.


This led me to question how it is so quick to label a student with ADD/ADHD in so many schools . On pg. 7, Prensky writes, "Is it that Digital Natives can't pay attention, or that they choose not to?"    This questions keeps spinning around in my head. Especially when he writes " Their attention spans are not short for games, for example, or for anything else that actually interest them ...... So it generally isn't that Digital Natives can't pay attention, it's that they choose not to." (pg.18)  As educators we really need to stop trying to label every student with some kind of excuse as to why they are not learning in our classroom, and instead find what makes them learn. We need to break free of our inhibitions of trying new technology, and just go for it. Stop making excuses, and be proactive. When I first started teaching, my school had no idea what a smartboard did, and neither did I. But it was taking up room in my classroom, so I decided to mess with it and see if I could use it, or dispose of it. The smartboard turned out to be the single greatest thing I had in my classroom, and now 3 years later we have a smartboard in every classroom. Too many times teachers also think it's too difficult to teach students how to work a piece of technology. This is true especially in the younger grade levels. That group of students is constantly being passed up on getting technology, when in reality they are the true digital natives. Interactive clickers for example, are a powerful tool for quick assessment, and offer less time spent on grading stacks of paper tests. However, some educators do not want to spend the time to learn the clickers and show the students, especially the younger students. What I found with my first graders is that they will learn it, if they are motivated to learn it. And because they clickers provide immediate results, they are begging me after the test to go back to the questions they missed so I can explain it and tell them the right answer. We have to use technology in our classroom, and if it's unknown we need to find the resources on how we could use it before we are ready to discard it. We don't have a lot to lose because we are currently losing half of our students already, so take the leap and go for it. You will be amazed at your results!

Some Classroom Tech Advice

Ways that a teacher might need to change common practice to engage digital natives:

1. Subscribe to technology feeds. Pick and choose what you would like to try and what would work best in your specific classroom.
2. Attend professional development that focuses on integrating technology in the classroom.
3. Stay connected! Talk to other staff members and educators about what they do in the classroom.
4. Small steps, wins the race. Try one technology idea at a time and don't overwhelm yourself!
5. Always reflect. Was the new technology useful? Were the students engaged? Did it meet the objective you were going for? Did the students learn? What can I do differently next time?

About Me

My name is Diana. I have been working in an urban school district since 2007. I have taught first and fourth grade, prior to becoming an ELL teacher. A lot of our  schools are 90% free and reduced lunch, with a high population of Hispanic students at some schools. I love teaching in that kind of school setting because I feel like that is where I am needed the most. It helps that I am able to relate with a lot of my students and their parents since I am also from an immigrant family, and I can understand some of the trials they are going through. During my third year of teaching I realized that I had become very passionate about technology in the classroom. I try to continue to find ways to use technology in the classroom not to replace a teacher, but to aid the teacher in whole group and small group instruction. I enjoy training my staff members over our new technology as well as teachers from our district because it not only allows me to share things that I know, but it allows me to learn from other educators about different things that they do in the classroom. 

                                                 Remy - my sweet puppy Dog!