September 23 Assignment

I definitely believe that the so called "digital natives" are present in our classrooms today. I think that we as educators are having a hard time recognizing them because a lot of their activities are taking place outside of the classroom.
I believe that for these students, and not all of them are at this level yet, we need to make accommodations just like we would for a child with an IEP. As stated in the article, the learning style for the digital native is very different. When they find a topic they are interested in learning about, they are capable of finding out so much more information from the Internet, that they often go above and beyond what would be the normal requirement for an assigned research project. This is how educators should look at this new era of learners. These students should be allowed to use that skill and interest to drive their completion of an assignment. We differentiate teaching and teaching approaches for all different types of learning styles, why not the digital natives. I believe it is also our responsibility as educators to teach "normal skills" and "normal study habits", but a happy medium can be established. Due to all that the digital natives have the potential to be exposed to (chat rooms, e-mails, "real-time", blogs, web cams, etc), I believe that we as educators should still maintain the responsibility of teaching the concept of "Internet safety". Our school society should still take ownership of safety for our student to the best of our abilities. For younger students, I believe that the more traditional type of teaching (paper, pencil, textbook) is required. The differention of teaching should come as the students mature.
I think that these students are capable of being taught and assessed on the same information (ex: 5th grade states & capitals, 4th grade North Carolina History), but it is the approach of the classroom teacher that needs to change. Traditional paper and pencil assessments will continue to benefit some students, but finding a different approach to assessing the digital natives should be a natural progression with the change in teaching approaches. As stated before, we make a lot of accommodations for students with special needs; the digital natives should be allowed the same consideration.
I also believe in order for the classroom teacher to make this change, an educational push for the teaching of these new ideas and concepts to classroom teachers needs to be a priority . A lot of current educators are not as up-to-date with the new technology and would finding that teaching a digital native could be very unnerving. Without knowledge and understanding of this new type of student and their specific needs, the teacher will find himself/herself at a great disadvantage.