E-learning2 Part A (sheng zhi)

Digital natives think differently from us digital immigrants. While our time we play one dimensional games like tetris, street fighter, mario brothers and other 72-in-1 games; they play Resident Evil 5, Halo and Dead Space. These games are played three-dimensionally, require one to enage multiple enemies at a time and make in-game strategies that are more sophisticated than our games 20 years ago.

They are adapted to visualising spaces that are hidden from view, able to divide their attention towards several items at the same time and come up with competent strategies to solve problems.

However in this age where there is information overload, when one game is completed, it is replaced by the next immediately. They do not think what skills they have learnt from the previous game they played. So these skills are unlikely to be applied in other areas as they have not been processed cognitively.

The digital native I chose is Dylan. He uses internet chats and online tools to communicate with people that lives far away from him, with some even from different continents. Dylan is similar to many singaporean students in the way that he communicates and collaborate online. Nowadays most students have at least one of the following: friendster, blog, MSN, facebook, Myspace. Although they use them for mainly leisure purposes, they are now not restricted to solely face-to-face meeting and are free to talk anytime anywhere as long as they have a computer connected to the internet.

I think teachers today have to break their lessons into small sessions of about 15 min, start and stop many times to ask questions or get feedbacks so that the students' mind are not lulled into sleep that easily. Focus less on memorising and put more effort in teaching skills like observation, communication, interaction, problem solving and parallel thinking.