Reading about the Digital Natives was very interesting. Before reading this article I had never heard this term “digital natives” which refers to the generation of children that grew up with technology. For example in the article the author referred to this generation as people who were addicted to Nintendo, calling the children “Nintendo kids”. Now students or workers are said to have different cognitive thinking patterns compared to other generations. When looking at “emergent” learning and digital literacy (Prensky “Digital Natives”) Prensky says, “As a result, the challenge facing educational designers is to recognize these cognitive differences and to develop learning offerings that are appropriate to their cognitive learning patterns.” Prensky is talking about digital natives and their different way of learning compared to different generations.
When looking at “emergent” learning Tompkins says emergent learning is, “This perspectives on how children become literate—that is how they learn to read and write.” Emergent learning is very essential to a students learning. Reading and writing is very important it not only allows the students to be literate, but also helps with all other subjects. When looking at English Language Learners (ELL) emergent learning comes later on for learning to read and write in English. Tompkins talks about children and the development of literacy. For reading the child show interest in books, they start to pretend to read. Children will also start to use illustration as cues to the story. As for writing; children may distinguish between writing and drawing. They also start to write random letters on a page or just show an interest in writing. All of my students are passed emergent literacy; though some may have a difficult time reading and writing they are capable of performing some type of reading and writing.
In all I was very interested in the part about “digital natives” and their learning, it would be interesting to learn more about this generation.
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Meagan,
ReplyDeleteI am SO glad to know that I was not the only future educator who had not heard of digital literacy. When I was younger we had computer games at my house however, they were primarily educational (Math Blaster I think was the name of one of the games!). I never viewed them as educational because I was having fun while playing them. However, the digital world in definitely emerging and/or already has emerged. I think it is great to be able to incorporate meaningful technology into any lesson plan. If the students are enjoying the new type of learning, perhaps they will become more motivated. I think it is important for all of us to learn as much as we can now about technology and hopefully our up coming project will help with that.
I like how you mentioned that emergent literacy can be classified as pictures, doodles or a strand of letters. I had never really thought about that until we talked about it in class. Those are all just steps in becoming an emergent reader.
On a side note- I have found this blog to be very insightful and enjoy reading what everyone has to say. See you in class!