E-Learning II

Part A: Digital Natives

What are some characteristics of digital natives?
- Always online be it on Facebook, Messenger or even Youtube.
- Always creating new content to share with others
- Always sharing new information through blogs, tweets and Youtube
- Multitasking most of the time

What are digital natives good at?
- Good processing habits
- Not just passive users; they want to create better technology and overcome barriers
- They have good collaborative learning style
- Interact vastly with different people even overcoming language and physical barriers
- A community of sharing; they like to share information

What are digital natives poor at?
- They disclose too much about their personal data
- They have very bad attention span for any traditional modes of teaching; “Every time I go to school I have to power down,” complains a digital native student.

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've picked Jalen. Jalen is an artist, animator, and digital-media creator. He has been dabbling in amination for about 2 years and he attends classes on how to produce his own movies and comic characters on his laptop. This is very similar to his Singaporean counterpart where the children here are exposed to various courses on animation in schools and the government is encouraging students to get involved in competitions like NEMATION.

How might teachers in Singapore today engage and teach our digital natives?
As new platforms and devices emerge, how we as teachers use the different modes of ICT tools must undergo a process of evolution. After all, the students live in a new digital age, like keeping in touch via Facebook and updating themselves in blogs. We have a task to equip students with the critical skills to engage in the emergent digital media landscape and understand what it means to be literate in an interconnected planet thus the traditional way of teaching is not always the right way to teach.

Part B: The Digital Native's Future

As you look into the possible future of the educational landscape, what sort of impressions, fears, or possibilities crossed your mind?
I expect that the students of the future would have a better understanding of their academics and find that all the answers they need would be at their fingertips and they understand that there is always a resource out there that they can use. My only fear is that teachers would not be fully equipped to guide these students and they may lose interest in schools.

What might living, learning and working be like in the future?
Things would be so much easier. We would be able to obtain information faster and there would be a whole new level of expectations that we would be living in.

How is NIE preparing you to prepare your students for this possible future? How might you prepare yourself?
I have been exposed to different ICT tools to scaffold my understanding of what is expected of me as a teacher to guide my students along to this future. And I have always been told that there is always help for me in case I encounter any problems. Instead of just teaching these tools I could always keep learning how the tools can help me and my students.