| 21st Century Learners: Tech Tools |
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Motivating StudentsDigital learners are easily bored or unmotivated with traditional teaching practices. Conversely, they desire the latest in innovative teaching practices and teaching tools. A language barrier prohibits this from happening. Many educators are digital immigrants and their accents are so foreign that our digital natives can’t understand. Therefore, we must learn to speak their language. Emerging TechnologiesStep one in breaking this barrier is to motivate digital learners. Integrating emerging technology into the day-to-day routine with video simulation games like Tabula Digita and SIM City can make learning more stimulating and teaching more exciting. These programs put the student in the middle of the action, exactly where they want to be. Providing them with this type of stimuli motivates students to take an active role in their learning. Kids are comfortable playing video games and surfing the Internet, as these things are sensory pulsing. Therefore, we should consider the implications this type of learning will have on the digital learner. MultimediaAn additional way of motivating digital students is by integrating different forms of multimedia into your lesson plans. Students love to create movies, take pictures, and blog. Apple provides a wonderful suite of software included with every Apple computer, iLife. Students can create cinema-quality movies with iMovie, digital stories with iPhoto, Web sites with iWeb , podcasts and music with Garageband and they can create their own high-end ePortfolio with iDVD. I know many of you are thinking, “we don’t have a budget, I need tools that are free for my students.” Not to worry, there are tons of free resources for transforming an analog classroom into a digital one. PC’s come equipped with MovieMaker, a software for editing video. Microsoft also offers a free download of PhotoStory 3 for creating digital stories and slide shows. Additionally, there are other free resources for blogs and wikis like wikispaces.com, blogger.com, wordpress.com, and pbwiki.com. HardwareAdditional digital tools that can motivate students during the learning process are digital cameras, camcorders, interactive whiteboards, MP3 players, and USB powered scientific tools like ProScope microscopes. If a teacher can learn how to motivate digital students, they have won a portion of the battle, but its not over. Even though a student may be motivated they must be challenged as well. If the curriculum isn’t rigorous enough, teachers can lose the kids. ChallengeNever underestimate the power of pure engagement. And higher order thinking is key to engagement. Think in terms of having students produce projects that are out of the norm. Students can create wikis, movies, music and much more and then collaborate with other students in the school district or even across the world. Carol Anne McGuire, founder of Rock Our World has perfected this concept. Rock Our World is an avenue for students to collaborate with one another while learning about their world. ROW utilizes the entire iLife Suite from Apple. Students collaborate across geographical boundaries to make movies, songs, and tell their stories. They also meet each other in iSight videoconferences to discuss their schools, cultures, and meet new friends around the world. Global AwarenessDigital students need to become more aware of their world, not just their immediate surroundings. Collaborative projects present students to a different audience and introduce them to the world. Take the students from Mabry Middle School in Georgia. Kids created movies surrounding the theme, "Making Our World a Better Place” and showcased them at their annual Film Festival. Not only did they create movies addressing critical issues in our world, they were introduced to the world themselves. Podcast Central, Mabry’s podcast, is one of the highest viewed educational podcasts in the world. As educators we have powerful tools at our disposal and we need to use them. Show your digital students how they can become Pulitzer Prize writers by maintaining a blog, Academy Award winning editors by creating an iMovie or even Nobel Prize winners/Presidential hopefuls concerned about Global Warming by creating an iEarn project. SupportDigital students need to be motivated, challenged, and supported. We can support our digital learners by continually providing them with the stimuli they need to operate at their full potential. Researchers posit that explanations presented in words and pictures, as opposed to words or pictures, make for increased learner comprehension (Mayer, 2001). Teachers can support students by ensuring they are engaged in an active learning process. According to Bonwell and Eison (1991) when students are involved in more than listening --- involved in higher-order thinking --- and they are allowed to explore their own attitudes, active learning takes place. By putting the learner in control of the learning environment, you are in essence supporting each of these active learning attributes and in turn supporting your students’ ability to learn to the utmost. We can also support our students by supporting ourselves. We must continue to seek professional development, read and research best practices in education and solicit ongoing support and encouragement from learning experts when bringing new tools to the classroom. There are several professional development programs that can help teachers enter and sustain in the digital world. PBS’ TeacherLine provides teachers with professional development opportunities they need in an accessible online format that makes learning fun, flexible and collaborative. The Intel® Teach Program has offerings designed to enable teachers to introduce, expand, and support 21st century learning with project-based approaches in the classroom. Teachers need to re-evaluate lesson plans to engage digital learners’ needs and capabilities. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with emerging technology and integrate the use of digital tools into lesson plans. eMentoringAn awesome way to motivate, challenge and support digital students is by creating a mentor program. eMentor programs, as I like to call them, create a pathway for students to teach one another educational, effective, and acceptable use of technology in the classroom. These programs create an environment where students are more likely to learn how to be self-sufficient from a peer than a teacher and they encourage students to take responsibility for their learning. I will provide more resources on how to start an eMentor and an eAmbassador program (for teachers) next time. Enter the Digital WorldEngaging today’s learner and placing them in the middle of the content isn’t an easy task, but by becoming open to new and innovative teaching practices it makes the journey more exciting. The decision to enter the digital world is one step out of many towards creating the ultimate digital student. If you aren’t familiar with terms like: podcasts, Google docs, blogs, wikis, geocaching, ePortfolios, del.icio.us, or open source it is possible you aren’t supporting your digital students in a way that will promote their learning to the fullest. These technology tools are in their toolbox and they need to be in ours as well. To help put this in perspective view “A Vision of a K12 Students Today” a moving video about digital natives. The video, produced by B.J. Nesbit is a powerful testament to how teachers need to view our current educational status.
Once you view these videos and “free your mind” to the amazing possibilities of new teaching and learning practices, like the song says, “the rest will follow.” Confucius eloquently captured this moment when he wrote, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”  Cathleen Richardson is an Educational Consultant and eLearning Specialist.
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