Teaching for Meaningful Learning

Pamela Wilson
Blog 9
LS589 W1

In writing about the decline of education in the United States, Marc Prensky (2001) states that we ignore the fundamental cause of this decline. Prensky postulates that our students are no longer the same as the students that our educational system was designed to teach. He notes that today’s students are the first generation to have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using digital age toys and tools. He has developed the concepts of Digital Natives or native speakers of the digital language and Digital Immigrants, or those who have had to learn the digital language later in life. He believes that Digital Natives learn differently than Digital Immigrants and therefore need to be taught in a different way than we traditionally taught students. Traditionally students were taught to work in manufacturing and agriculture. The world has moved beyond that into advanced technology.

In addition to this, low income students have a handicap even though they are digital natives. In an interview for the National Education Association, MIT professor Henry Jenkins (2008) says that low income students are students that have experienced a participation gap. He notes that there is a gap between students who have continuous broadband access and students who have to go to school labs or libraries to acquire broadband access. School and library computer labs often have time limits and filters which block out certain sites. There are limits on what users can do with the computers also. He states that this leads to a gap in skills and competencies. An article entitled Mind the Gap (Long, 2008) states, “According to Pew Research, there are still 30 million American households that do not have a computer, mostly in low-income or rural communities.” It gives these statistics: 39% of Hispanic children, 45% of black children, 11% of Asian and Pacific Islander children, and 15% of white children rely on schools to use computers. So there really is a computer participation gap among select populations of students.

Because I teach inner-city low income students, this participation gap is of importance to me. When I first started learning about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, I was confused because even though my students didn’t have access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, they still behaved as Digital Natives to use Prensky’s terminology. This confusion was resolved when I discovered the term media-based learning style. My students are surrounded by television, radio, MP3 players and video games. So even though they may not have access to online computing, they still learn the way that “Digital Natives” learn because they have been surrounded with digital technology all of their lives. There is even evidence that video game playing enhances the learning experience of students. In the MSNBC article, Researchers Tout Positive Effects of Video Games (Lewis, 2005), Mitch Wade, an information consultant for firms like Google and Rand Corp., stated, “It’s the problem-solving. And we saw that when we surveyed professionals who grew up playing video games. What’s a surprise is that they’re better at things you need in business—like team play and careful risk-taking.” This is a personal frustration for me because my school’s Internet filter blocks out all of the educational gaming sites.

The bottom line is this. As teachers in the 21st century, we have to meet our students where they learn best. We also have to teach them the skills that they need to survive in our technological world. In short, we have to give them the tools that they need to become lifelong learners, just as we have had to become.

References

Jenkins, H. (2008) The participation gap. NEA Today. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from http://www.nea.org/home/15468.htm

Lewis, G. (2005, May). Researchers tout positive effects of video games. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7912743/

Long, C. (2008, March). Mind the Gap. NEA Today, 24-31

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, Vol. 9, No. 5.