"Speed" makes you learn.

I had the opportunity (and so my classmates) to read an article about Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives, written by Mark Prensky. These two categories of people who are interacting, one way or another, with technology, are nowadays interacting between them. The context in which we are interested in is the classroom, and in this article is clearly stated (and I agree with the author, by the way) that we, teachers, being Digital Immigrants, have to change in order to be in the same page our Digital Native students are.

In his article (you can find it here), Mark Prensky claims "Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice." I don't think the following Digital immigrant lady has little appreciation for technology (hahaha!). Here is the evidence that the "Speedy lady" finds it utterly fascinating. Now, she is an example to follow and that is why we should try to do our best so that we can work together with our students without feeling the fear of being "consumed" by those Digital Natives.

Watch this video and tell me ... Are you a Digital Native or a Digital Immigrant?

I guess everybody knows her :D

                

Digital literacies in the classroom.

  On  our last lesson we were given information about "Digital Literacies". What we had to do was to read the article written by Nicky Hockly and watched a video( you can find it here) related to the topic being discussed.

In his article, Nicky Hockly refers to  Digital Literacies as:  

             "our ability to effectively make use of the technologies at our disposal. We are not just talking about a checklist of technical skills, but also about the social practices that surround the use of new media. So not just knowing how to create a blog entry, but knowing how to use this to connect with a wider community of readers and writers, and what sort of online persona one projects though one's post. Not just knowing how to upload photos to Flickr ( a photo sharing site), but knowing whether to publish them under a Creative Commons license and what this implies in terms of digital rights and usage."
            

   Here is a chart that summarizes the different "digital literacies".I will now discuss the literacy with a focus on language since as a teacher of English, it is what I care most. Apart from that, I observe how  people are getting  accustomed to  using  abbreviations  as their code of communication thus bringing  some  misunderstanding among themselves.




   From this, I may say that I am familiar with the use of digital literacies but I apply them according to the context, the receiver and the situation in itself. For example, when I want to send an “sms” to a friend of mine, I use digital abbreviations because I know we share the same social code and we understand each other very well. It is different when I am delivering a lesson or I need to speak to whoever is in a superior position; the way I choose to express myself is totally different from his or hers. I need  use a more formal language since it demonstrates respect to the receiver.
  Do you agree that we need to teach digital literacies in our lessons? Why?
  I reckon that we need to teach digital literacies to our learners but we should have a reason why we do so. We cannot teach competency if we are planning to do nothing with it. Another important point that we should turn our attention to is the kind of group of students we have in the classroom since I do not want my foreign learners to misunderstand the correct use of the language. It is true that there are some new phrases that many teenagers use with their mates but it is just part of their own culture. I am not criticising this, but we may run some risks when including them –digital inventions- in our lessons because if they have problems with the understanding of “formal” language, imagine dealing with both together at the same time. For this reason, I would prepare only some activities connected with digital literacies, perhaps in a game at the end of a lesson or of a term explaining that they are the ones they may find on the net and what they are for. Thus, they would find it useful. Also clarifying the meaning and making some association with the ones they already know in Spanish.

Have a look at the following conversation and answer.Is it a formal or an informal one?
Is it clearly understandable? Is it used face-to-face in the same way?