Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

1.  Are you a digital native or digital immigrant?  I am a digital immigrant.  Our first home computer had floppy disks--and we were pretty advanced at the time only because my dad worked for IBM.  My first cell phone was in a bag that had to be plugged into the car to work.  To this day I have to print out emails, documents, etc. and hand write my questions/responses before I type them in....I can't seem to transition to composing on the computer.  Probably the biggest blow to my "native" friends is that I DISLIKE texting! 

2.  How are you equipped to teach digital natives in your classroom?   This has been a long process.  I try to attend any workshops my district provides in the field of technology and have had technology as a professional development goal for the past several years.  This current masters program is helping me further my skills and comfort level.  I try to make my lessons interactive and as "digital" as possible by using lots of graphics, yotube, e-instruction, etc.  I also try to chunk my hour lessons into 15 minute sections to help accommodate for the "natives'" new style of learning. 

3.  What further steps could you take to learn the "language" of multimedia? As technology is continually changing and expanding I think this process will be constant for myself as an educator too.  I will always need to stay as current as possible with technology skills and tools.  Attending workshops, taking classes, and learning from the "natives" will be imperative to successful instruction.  

4.  What steps can you take to keep students safe from youtube content?  I work in a K-4 building.  Our students do not have access to youtube when they log in as a student on the computer system. I preview videos before I put them into instruction.  The site:  http://safeshare.tv/ allows you to take the advertisements off a youtube video and save it as a safer "content" that the students could access independently.