I am a college prof and I really wish that the digital native culture really existed among my students. But it decidedly does not. My students, coming mostly from the rural midwest and many of whom are first-generation college students, have a passing knowledge of common digital devices such as computers and cell phones, but get them beyond those things — or deeper into the things they know than just the basic apps — and they are out to sea. I tried to get a class of mine, all junior and senior mathematics majors, to download some software from the net the other day and it was as if I had started speaking in tongues. They are not exactly resistant to technology, but most certainly NOT in their DNA. And I think it’s becoming a dangerous assumption that because a small and visible portion of the population fit this digital natives description, that therefore the entire population may be adequately described as such.

Second, I just wanted to clarify that Ball State is the most UN-wired campus in the USA, not the most wired. It apparently has a higher percentage of its campus covered by wifi networks than any other university in the country.

I am trying to focus on filtering and sharing. Filtering – building skills to filter all the information available to students. Sharing – creative, functional and insightful ways of projecting information over the internet.

To me, this begs the question/s: what do we know? What is the status of that knowledge? And how does the teacher’s “state of knowing” shape students’ learning experiences?

No doubt there is a shift in authority here, just as new media has brought into question many of our notions of authorship and intellectual property. However, is the difficulty you are describing one related to teaching and learning or an inability to maintain the conventional institutional relations between teachers and students?

And I don’t mean that as a snarky question. It is a genuine challenge. If we are taking up Jenkins/Levy’s goal of a new democratic protocol, then might not part of that be developing new relations/communities for learning. If so, the question is not “how do we teach what we don’t know?” but rather “what new pedagogic ethos might emerge?” That is, how might we “teach” and “learn” as other than “teacher” and “student”?

Technology, and knowledge, are tools; all the rest relates to our judgment of how people choose to use, abuse or ignore them.

Great topic, very thought provoking and I am among those currently trying to catch up. This is my second year at a public high school north of Boston. I am struck both by students’ capabilities and lack of proficiencies in using technology. Maybe these sophomores are among the last who did not teethe on PowerPoint and Excel.

Just when I assume that they can take the proverbial ball and run with it, I look over intently hunched shoulders at blank screens. When asked what they are waiting for, I find that they are not adept at getting that old ball rolling. Refreshers and guidance are provided as well as a review of the assignment requirements and corresponding rubrics and I almost feel them crossing their fingers as I pray to the inspiration gods to quickly descend.

Then I come to and just hope for the retention gods to show up; so that the kids can follow the directions, navigate and save to the right place. Naturally, they are experts at iPodding (is there such a word?) and texting and MySpace. That’s their world and they are entitled to it.

Although I am not top notch in the technology department, I respect the potential, embrace as many opportunities that come my way and that I can capture, and definitely look to my students for guidance just as they look to me.

Today, I taught my students skype. After setting up their ID’s we had a class conference call and I taught them to mute their mikes, chat to ask for the mike, and demonstrated the privacy features of skype. We looked at each person’s profile and critiqued each other.

It was a lesson not only in skype but in online safety. We are going to use it in many ways. Right now we’re looking for a classroom in spain to do a project with our spanish teacher. She wants to do match students up one to one and have calls that we record. Our students will then take the 5 minute recording about a predetermined topic and e-mail it to her for grading.

Then, we want to do the same thing with a classroom in Mexico.

Finally, she wants them to discuss the differences in accents.

What an opportunity! It seems to me that those teachers who “get it” need mechanisms to share and match up for such projects.

Know any teachers in Spain or Mexico teaching English?

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Notice, that if I didn’t have a productive use for Skype, it would be a distraction. However, everything must be planned and have a purpose.

This is a great post!

Also, have you noticed that many of us are campaigning to link you into the TEchnorati 100 — Read my yesterday’s post at the end.

You’re just the edublogger to do it!

Keep on blogging! You inspire so many of us!

I teach Honors Precalculus Juniors in high school and they are totally in the dark about more authentic productive uses of current technology. Virtually none of them have heard of del.icio.us or RSS or Wiki’s (other than Wikipedia) or as Karen mentioned, the reviewing toolbar in Word or tools to create web pages.

By the way, text messaging and IM and cell phones can be used productivly, don’t get me wrong, but I think we give too much credit to most kids who are really only using these devices for entertainment.