Weiqiang e-learning Activity A

Digital Native: Justin

In terms of digital background, how similar is Justin to a typical Singaporean student? When was the first time i had my first computer? I believed it was in my JC days. Though that is the case, we were exposed to computer usage as early as primary school. But it was deemed to be a non-necessity then.

Students are now exposed to the use of computer as early as the age of 6 to 7. They cannot do without their computer, laptop, i-pod and others. Digital Natives spent more time using their digital gadgets for numerous different activities compared to doing 'old-school' studying and reading.

Just to state a few characteristics of a digital natives, they are more expressive and extremely social. They want active involvement in every issues and needs constant engagement. They have the fearlessness to engage in task, with failure the least of their concern.

But when there is pros, there are bound to have cons. One ever present problem was their inability to communicate face to face with people. As they are used to communicating in the virtual world, they will feel a sense of unease when doing face-to-face communication.

As for how digital immigrants like us can do to engage the digital natives, I think that a more interactive lesson could be a good start in engaging the natives. As for the infusion of the teaching pedagogies, our main aim is to equip students with the necessary 21st century skills, where formative assessment play a more important role than before. Asking questions and having pauses in between lessons allow discussions to be done and making the lesson a bi-directonal interaction.

I am still skeptical about introducing games into lessons but not the concepts hidden within GBL. Exploration comes before teaching is a good approach where students will be able to have a sense of ownership in what they learn.

Thus I think that being a digital immigrant, i think it will be cool also that I allow myself to be a learner in the meanwhile to learn from my students as afterall, they are still the natives.