E-Learning 2

3. Answer these questions in your blog

•What are some characteristics of digital natives? (What are they good at? What are they poor at?)

Characteristic

- hypertext mind
- multidimensional visual-spatial skills
- attentional deployment
- responding faster to expected and unexpected stimuli
- mental maps
- representational competence
- inductive discovery

Strength

- able to use the knowledge they get from playing games in their daily life; learn from experience.
- are able to multitask

Weakness

- short attention spans for the old ways of learning

•Which portrait did you select? (In your blog, create a link to the portrait.) In terms of their digital background, how similar was that student compared to a Singapore student?

I selected the potrait of Virginia. I believed that at the age of 14 years old, the students of Singapore are more exposed to the digital technology. This is because, I suppose that there are students younger than the age of 12 years old that are blogging.

Viginia and Singapore students are familiar due to the fact that they are more engage when dealing with digital media. They are also being introduced to these digital media at a young age since their parents or those who are older than them are using it. Kids at these age will get curious and would want to explore the technology on their own. Hence, the similar background.

•How might teachers in Singapore today engage and teach our digital natives?

The need to use more of digital teachnology in their teaching to engage the students. This includes digital games that will attract the attention of the digital natives. These digital games must be of the correct design so that kids are learning the correct things.


5. Answer these questions in your blog

•As you look into the possible future of the educational landscape, what sort of impressions, fears, or possibilities crossed your mind?

I was truly awed by the Singapore's iN2015 vision video. The wonder of technology. Yes, of course there are some fears that I have in mind. Am I able to catch up with the technology in years to come? Will I be one of the outdated Singaporean who refused to accept the new technology?

•What might living, learning and working be like in the future?

I think that technology plays a huge part in the future. Who knows that paper might not even exist in the future... ;)

Anyway, I forsee that working in the future would be less taxing as I believe that information regarding work will be stored digitally and retrieving the information wouldn't be much of a problem.

Learning will be a fun for the students as there will definitely be less of classroom teaching and more of independent learning using technology.

•How is NIE preparing you to prepare your students for this possible future? How might you prepare yourself?

So far, we are encourage to use different media tools for our presentation. This will prompt us to get our creative mind to use. By getting us exposed to the media technology that the students are using or going to be using, it will get us prepared for the future.

On our part, we have to constantly keep updated with the latest technology that the students might get interested with. We must not be narrow-minded and think that only the traditional way of teaching works. Also, I believe in having to experience the technology itself for us to know how it work. Hence, we must also be curious in trying new media technology, just like how the students will get curious with it.