Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives.

The dicotomy that once split the generations has grown beyond a mere temporal gap, and is increasingly becoming a technological one. Safety is often found in the familiar, and when we are faced with the unfamiliar, we begin to feel threatened. At its heart, this may be the reason that a digital cleft exists in education. Students familiar with technology and teachers unfamiliar with technology are at odds when trying to understand one another. Oldhat teachers will often continue to utilize what students see as boring teaching styles. But teachers cannot educate to the past, time doesn't work that way; they have to educate to the future, and this cannot happen when they cling to the old ways. Students engage the world in a way much differently from the way they did thirty years ago. Information is ubiquitous and the delivery methods for that information are various and ever-present. These are facts that need to be accounted for and utilized in the classroom. If we are to access the minds of students, we have to plug ourselves in to their world. Only then will we be educating the future and not the past.

Integrating educational technology

In a world booming with technological innovation, the classroom can sometimes look like an educational relic. If educators are to prepare students for the future, the classroom needs to at least reflect recent developments in technology. Technology doesn't need to replace more traditional methods in all cases, but can be used to augment lessons and provide students with more resources and alternative means of communication. Not giving students the advantage of modern educational methods and tools is to deny them the knowledge and skills they will need to compete in tomorrow's economy. 

Allow myself to introduce...myself

Hello everyone, my name is Aaron and I am looking forward to the new term.  I am pursuing a Master’s degree in secondary education with a concentration in Social Studies.  I studied the Humanities and Philosophy in my undergraduate, and studied in Europe.  I also had the opportunity to visit Egypt.  When I graduated, I was given the opportunity to show pictures of my trip to Egypt to a group of 6^th graders.  The students enjoyed my presentation, I enjoyed presenting to them and I was invited back several times to present again.  This experience got me interested in pursuing a career in education.  I love inspiring students and introduction them to new ideas, cultures and perspectives.  I hope to use the tools we learn about in this course to enrich and enliven the academic content of my future classroom.