The world around us is constantly changing and evolving as technology becomes more prevalent in everything we do, so why wouldn’t the classroom do the same? Education must adapt to the technologically advanced world we are becoming which has influenced the use of technology in the classroom.
ISTE has set standards for technology use in education which provide guidance for identifying the technology skills, knowledge, and dispositions that different groups should aim to develop in order to succeed. One of the ISTE standards talks about how students must be prepared to grow in a constantly evolving technological setting. A section of the student standards say that they should work to be global collaborators by “using digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally” (ISTE Standards for Students, n.d.). This is meaningful to me because I see technology as a way to broaden our experience and our point of view by being able to communicate with people from all parts of the world so quickly and efficiently. A student standard I believe is outside my current skill set is the innovative designer portion which suggests that “students should use a variety of technologies within a design process in order to identify and solve problems by creating new and imaginative solutions” (ISTE Standards for Students, n.d.).
The term “digital natives” is used describe young people and their relationship to technology, and the idea that they have more knowledge when it comes to technology then the older generations. I believe this label is accurate but could possibly be misleading. I agree with the idea that teachers should be better equipped to teach this generation of “digital natives” due to our world constantly advancing in technology and how we teach and learn. This term, however, can be misleading to assuming that this generation knows all we need to know about technology solely because we were raised playing games on a computer and learning how to work a phone before we learned to ride a bike. There is so much more to learn about technology then simply how to use it. Our next step is teaching “digital natives” how to utilize these technology skills in order to advance our way of thinking and solving problems. Technology is always advancing and changing, and so must our ways of teaching. I anticipate that my students will be slightly more advanced in using technology, whereas my generation was much more advanced than our own teachers. I believe as we start to see the need to keep up with the advancements of technology, the gap between these so called “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” will cease to exist.
References
ISTE Standards for Students. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-students
