Digital Generation in the Classroom

Rapid change in digital era

We are living in information era. Every things can change rapidly. We are living in exponential times. The first commercial text message was sent in December 1992. The number of text messages sent and received today exceeds the population of the planet. In 2005, the amount of technical information is doubling every two years and by 2010 it’s double in every 72 hours.
Today we face a huge change of our students radically. Today’s environment is no longer mach with our old educational system. We are witness of the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century. Digital technology have rapidly change our behavior. Cell phone use every where in every time, thus communication become more intimate. It can perform both synchronize or non synchronize communication (like sms, email, ym!).
High-end cell phone equipped with fascinating application. So they called smartphone for their ability to perform communication in many sophisticated ways: sms, mms, internet messengger, or even facebook and facetime with iPhone.

Internet is everywhere. Technology for accessing the net is getting smaller, stronger and cheaper. Hotspot is no longer scarce. Serve as common facility in cafes, malls, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, or many other public facility. Today, there are students in China, Australia, Austria, India, Bangladesh, and the USA who communicate, create and evaluate on projects together every day using internet.

The digital native

Kids bring their gadget to interact each other, seek entertainment and also become target of digital advertisement. The bombardment of digital technology makes this teenager become screenagers. They growing up with a mouse and soon with a touch screen in their hands. Digital is their language.
Marc Prensky gives them name ‘a digital native’, a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology, and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Digital native is people who grew up with the technology that became prevalent in the latter part of the 20th century, and continues to evolve today.

Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save as a hard copy. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, for instance, calling people into a room to see a webpage instead of sending them the URL. A digital native might refer to her new "camera"; but a digital immigrant might refer to his new "digital camera".

Similarly, parents clash with their children at home over gaming, texting, YouTube, Facebook and other Internet technology issues. What many digital immigrants miss is that digital natives grew up with technology, and it is how they connect with their friends, perform research, and feel at home. Young people are not "addicts" or "bad" simply for using the tools of the world they grow up in. In their 2011 article, Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss the issue of generation clashes at home, school and the workplace.

Education, as Marc Prensky states, is the single largest problem facing the digital world as our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Immigrants suffer complications in teaching natives how to understand an environment which is "native" to them and foreign to Immigrants. Prensky's own preference to this problem is to invent computer games to teach digital natives the lessons they need to learn, no matter how serious. This ideology has already been introduced to a number of serious practicalities. For example, piloting an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the army consists of someone sitting in front of a computer screen issuing commands to the UAV via a hand-held controller which resembles (in detail) the model of controllers that are used to play games on an Xbox 360 game console.

Pros – Cons of digital technology

The introduction for earlier children to computer have significant effects. They become discontinues concentration, lack of physical experiment and multitasking person. There is solid evidence regarding the effects of technology on cognitive skills development, particularly in areas related to visual-spatial skills and nonverbal forms of intelligence.
The ability to deal with two- and three-dimensional images, spatial visualization, and the skills needed to read images, the ability to recognize the information which images contain, as well as the ability to interpret images, are expected to improve with repeated practice, for example, through the regular use of multimedia and computer games.

Many computer applications have design features which require visual rather than verbal information processing. The constant enhancement of the graphic design and realism of video games in the last years presents new dimensions of spatial, iconic and dynamic features, which provide a new environment for children to develop a set of skills concerning visual attention, orientation and spatial representation.

Arriving with blog and social networking there new kind of activity for internet user: Prosumer of information. People no longer only seek and read information but they produce their information as well. There are segments on TV program over common people as amateur journalist posting their movie or coverage. TV media can produce interesting program just by picking up video clips or scenes that’s already posted in Youtube or public photo domain in the internet.

Dealing with negative effect

Of course there are tons of negative potentials lurk in digital era. Among educators, pornography and violence are the top most concern to be banned for their negative impact for young people. Young people have tremendous curiosity on pornography cannot be control with internet filter application like Netnany.

The last Minister of Information declares regulation of filtering pornography and introducing save internet program but many netter point as useless effort. Too many ways to access the abundant adult materials against poor internet filter capability. And there are too many ISPs and ‘Warnet’s must be watch for breaking policies by providing bad but ‘interesting’ internet contents. Internet industry serve ‘bad’ content’ because they become magnet for youngsters and gain more profit from it.

Playing with videogames or online games which support violence or sexual stereotypes do have a negative effect on young people, particularly if the use is far from being moderate. There is also a correlation between longer playing times of computer and video games, and low academic achievement. But, with many warnets over online games every corner right now, many young people get addicted by using internet games more than 3 – 4 hours every day. So, who will watch them all whenever they violate the rules.

It is already clear from well documented research (Bracken & Lombard, 2004) that children can recall what they learn from a computer, especially if they are rewarded. However, the crucial question is how computers are affecting skill learning, cognition and the skills necessary for reasoning, problem solving, reading and creativity.
Most students who still have limited technology access obtained below-average academic achievement. Student with lower experience in technology use –especially computer and internet- will suffer the same. But an in-depth analysis shows that students with moderate technology use (not excessive one) have the best achievement. Students who are less confident in their ability to carry out daily tasks on a computer or the Internet also had worse results than more confident students.
The many and easy ways in which information can be found in the Internet, copied and pasted, has also raised concerns about plagiarism, particularly in university settings but also increasingly in schools.

This is, in fact, an indication of the shortcomings of the lack of appropriate media education in schools, and the need to incorporate in curricula not only the technological skills required to manage information from a technical point of view, but also the values that inspire concepts which are difficult to grasp at early ages but may have a long lasting impact, such as intellectual property, academic authority, or even the difference between finding and downloading information and constructing knowledge, personally or
collectively.

The Internet and online gaming are a part of the world we live in and that our children grow up in. Like a knife, it can be used for help or for harm. We must find ways to bridge the digital divide between parents, teachers and children, as the disharmony between parents, teacher and children can produce a bigger problem like misuse of Internet or gaming addictions. In this increasingly technological culture, children need our guidance, not our resistance, in navigating the world they inherit. Rather than demonize the digital age, we can show them the beauty of the natural world and help them use technology as the helpful tool that it can be. Of course, to teach something, one must be willing to hear input about it.
At the end of the day, our children will make their own choices about whether and how they use the Internet and gaming. The best we can do is set a good example, clear boundaries, and impress upon them values of balance between online and offline life. With help, we can make a cultural shift to help new generations view and use the Internet and gaming as tools for healthy and sustainable use.
What children learn from game is about anything. Many game developer create sophisticated MMORPG game that not only provide with awesome graphic and sound effect but also need expert strategy and team work to acomplish game mission. Strategy with complex decision making, cooperation, team building to solve complex tasks, foreign language, ecomonic chalenge and so on are subjects they can learn during playing and mastering the game.

Ipsos Mori (2007) research found interesting student’s opinion by asking question: In which three of the following ways do you prefer to learn? The answer is:
In groups 55%
By doing practical things 39%
By using computers 31%
From teachers 19%
From friends 16%
By copying 8%
At the library or museum 5%

So then ask your teachers or principals how they conduct curriculumn and deliver their lesson.