Digital Immigrant: Added to Vocabulary

Up until taking the digital immigrant test, I personally felt I had a decent idea of how to use technology. However, once I saw the very first question on the test dealing with modding, I knew at once I was a digital immigrant. I have never been very much into technology other than knowing what was necessary to complete my schoolwork. Now that I know I am a digital immigrant, I honestly can say I had never even heard of the term. In my opinion, a person who is digitally savvy has many experiences dealing with various means of digital communication. Unlike myself, the most digital communication I have taken part in, has come from my TE 401 and TE 402 classes. 

As much as I am a digital immigrant, it is important that I become an emergent learner in this area. Digital communication is becoming a way of life, especially in many aspects of learning. Being an emergent learner in this new digital era, the best way for me to begin learning is to slowly submerse myself into technologies such as wikis, blogs, etc. Through interaction with these new forms of communication, I will become more fluent and comfortable using these technologies. Also considering many students, younger than myself have a broader sense on how to use these technologies, as an educator I need to keep up with what students are learning and interacting with on a daily basis. With more exposure to digital medias, my hope is to retake the digital test again and no longer be a digital immigrant.

Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant. I was not surprised by this result, because I know the basic functions of the computer such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel, as well as how to use a cell phone, a digital camera, a digital picture frame, an iPod, instant messaging and photo story. Though before this semester, I had heard of Wiki’s, blog, and Google docs, but had never used them. I am most definitely an emergent learner in respect to my digital learning. I probably always will be an emergent digital literacy learner because I am always behind in learning about new technology. Also, since technology is constantly changing, it makes it very hard to keep up with all the new technologies and things one can use. Even my dad who is a computer programmer, has a hard time keeping up with the fast growing technology advances.

Emergent digital literacy is very similar to the way Tompkins describes emergent literacy in many ways. An emergent digital literacy learner has to learn a new set vocabulary and figure out what each term means and how it is used in the digital world; strategies on how to use the different digital mediums; comprehension of the new terms/vocabulary when reading or writing in the new digital literacy; and an emergent digital literacy learner has to learn about the different content-areas of study involved in digital literacy.

I Am a Digital Immigrant

After taking the digital native quiz I realized that I’m not as technologically savvy as I had thought I was. I knew certain words like ‘blog’ that we’ve been introduced to in college. However, some of the words I had never seen or heard of before this quiz. Times are definitely changing and this world is depending more and more on technology. Every time I turn around there’s something new that has been invented. Technology is growing and progressing every day at an extremely fast rate.

Now I realize that I’m not a digital native but rather a digital immigrant. I do not know as much as I thought I did. I always compared my knowledge of technology to my parents knowledge and could be the explanation as to why I thought I was so digitally native. I recall countless times having to explain certain things on the computer (facebook, microsoft word, itunes, even e-mail). However, being 21 years old I know that there’s been even more technology introduced to this world that I’ve never seen or heard of. I believe that technology can be a great tool to introduce into my future classroom. My neighbor is a teacher at an elementary school and she asked the school if she could have two ipod-touches and an apple desktop computer for her classroom. They allowed her to and she uses them daily in multiple ways with her classroom. She says she absolutely loves them and so do the kids! I think this is a fantastic idea if the school can afford them, to introduce kids to the efficiency of technology and I hope I can do the same in my future classroom.

Digital Natives

When I took the digital natives quiz I was surprised at the result. I had thought that I was fairly competent and current with technology. When I took the quiz I realized that I only know a lot about a few things, and I am completely unaware of others. From talking with others who took the quiz this seemed fairly common.

I think that this result makes me a digital immigrant. Technology is something that I have to constantly learn and relearn. It progresses faster than I can process it and apply it. I can definitely understand better how my parents and grandparents feel when they encountered computers, cell phones, or text messaging for the first time. To them I may seem like a "digital native," but really my digital literacy learning is constantly emerging.

I also realize that our students are emergent technology and literacy learners in many ways. In my sixth grade class, some students are familiar with making powerpoints and videos, but they need help making webpages. On the other hand, some students do not even know what a Word document is. I think that this illustrates that all students need to be immersed in technology. It is not easy to categorize students because everyone is in the process of learning some new technological skill.

Classroom Discussions

Within the community of my classroom, a vast majority of conversations taking place are very interactive between the students and the teacher. The most dominant form of conversation I see on a regular basis is instructional based, where my CT leads, guides, and supports the students. She will address issues and concepts and raise questions relating to the context. Once she poses a question, she encourages all her students to answer and will restate what they said to exhibit her knowledge of what the students are saying. Sometimes from this, other students will say they agree with the last person to talk and will continue to provide their own answer. During this setting, the conversation is welcome and contained within a safe learning environment. Another from of discussion I have seen includes more one one on attention between my CT and a few students or one student. Within this setting, the conversation and instruction is more personalized and catered to each student's needs, while at the same time providing them the opportunity to participate in a more "safe" environment. On occasion, I will also see mini discussions pop up among the students when they are talking to one another. They question one another and will also to a certain extent offer support and build off of one another's comments. Discussion does occur within this classroom and I would say functions as an important aspect of the learning that happens within the classroom.

With regard to scaffolding, some aspects that may help implement better response-centered discussion may include building questions. I feel if the students have a solid foundation they can build upon discussion wise they will be able to do a better job of talking and participating. Perhaps a way my teacher could incorporate this would be to find topics of interest that will draw the student's interest as some of the articles we read suggested. If the students are interested in what they are potentially talking about, I think it would allow them to be more outspoken with their thoughts as well as inspired to learn and explore the topic further. Another aspect I may suggest would be to allow plenty of wait time because as of now, my teacher does a decent job doing this, however I feel if there was more time for the students to think, their responses would be better thought out. For specific students in my class who have learning disabilities, I feel this would be extremely helpful and beneficial for them. Perhaps rewording or guiding the response-centered discussion would help these students be more successful, positive learning participants in the discussion.

In my classroom, I feel discussion is important, but at the same time needs to be tailored to support the students within the classroom. Support, presentation of questions and information in my opinion are the most important aspects of a successful discussion, as well as student participation.

Class Discussions

In my classroom I am seeing a lot of instructional conversations, which promotes comprehension through discussion. It is a joy to watch this teacher because she is always assisting the children to think, reason, comprehend, and understand the important ideas being taught. I learned in the Goldenberg article that this type of discussion is Instructional Conversation. The CT does make sure to keep the students on track but tries to step back and let the kids ask each other questions. The CT definitely has to guide the students and asks questions that will keep the students engaged and focused to the task at hand.

The scaffolding that’s needed for response-centered talk to take place is, I’ve always believed, an extremely safe and positive learning environment. If the students respect each other’s answers and conversations then everyone should feel comfortable to voice their opinions. The classroom rules/norms should be set up immediately on the first day of class so the students are able to practice these every day. I believe that it’s impossible to expect student’s to develop a positive and efficient response-centered talk without having a fantastic classroom community beforehand.

Since this is my second week having visited the elementary school, I don’t know each individual student well enough to answer the question about particular types of scaffolding.

Classroom Discourse

I don't get to see a lot of student driven discourse in my sixth grade placing. The class really emphasizes a traditional lecture, recitation, and round robin reading style. They do incorporate interesting literacy related projects, but they are usually independent and don't incorporate cooperative learning. When students do ask questions or a discussion is started it represents an I-R-E format. Frequently, student ideas are glossed over or ignored altogether instead of expanded upon. It's frustrating to see this happen in the classroom, because I can see how many students would benefit from discussion.

As discussed in the McGee article, all students can benefit from response centered discussions because students can discover and construct new information together. In this class there are many students who struggle with the reading material and need extra help identifying important details and understanding the story. Other students need to be challenged to think beyond the surface level and develop a more critical eye. I know many students are not comfortable talking and asking questions to the class, but they could get the help they need in a comfortable, reassuring small group setting.

Discussions in the Classroom

In my second grade classroom, I see both the recitation type “discussions” and actual discussions. Most of the discussions in my classroom start off as I-R-E, but flow to a beneficial discussion. Though, most of the discussions are dominated by the boys in the classroom and the CT. When my CT is looking for a specific answer she will call on one of three or four boys in the classroom whose hands go up first and whom she knows will give the right answer. The girls in the class are very shy and though they know the answers, or have good questions or thoughts they often do not share them. I believe that some of this has to do with the opportunity to do so, but not always.

The scaffolding that is needed for response-centered talk to take place is a good classroom community where the students feel comfortable to share their thoughts and ideas, and a set of classroom norms. Other ways to help response-centered talk, I believe, are mentioned in the Weinstein reading, supporting the participation of diverse learners. Using these different techniques will help bring the students into the conversation and discussions more effectively. Such as changing the way of asking questions, becoming familiar with different discourse patterns and allowing for accommodations in patterns, have explicit instruction and provide alternate response formats such as individual dry erase boards (p321-322).

I believe that explicit instruction and alternate response formats would be very beneficial in my classroom. A number of the students seem to struggle with the way the CT gives directions, and if she were a little more explicit at times, I think that she may have a better turn out with the students’ responses. Also, I think that the alternate response formats such as dry erase boards would be great if they were used in my classroom more often. They are used in math occasionally, but I have not seen them used with literacy. I think that this would allow the students to internalize information and think for themselves. It gives everyone a chance to participate and share their knowledge and ideas instead of the same students all the time and then a few scattered others.

Student Individuality

Every student is unique and adds a specific element to the class they are in. As a teacher, I too agree it is extremely important to truly know your students both in and outside the classroom. When students are within the classroom setting, it is imperative to know how to tailor lesson plans to each student. Whether students are ELL, ESL, or Special Ed., they all should be treated as individuals first, because this is the only successful way in my opinion to ensure they learn the best they can. In order to accomplish this, activities should be implemented to learn about each student, allowing them to express themselves and reveal who they are. With this information, I would be able to learn about my student's interests. 

Regardless of how information is acquired about each of my students, I truly believe with any information I am given, it will help both the student and myself develop a trusting and safe communication system within the classroom. My primary goal is to make sure my students feel welcome and safe within the classroom, because it may be the only place where these students may feel safe. One thing I may not learn about my students is what goes on when they are home and those factors could and can potentially have a great effect on how the students performs within the class.

So many factors come into play both in and outside of the classroom, however I feel it is my job to make sure I know as much as possible about my students so I can provide the best learning environment possible to accommodate the diversity that will be in my classroom. As mentioned before I would make sure to implement activities to explore ways to learn about my students as well as promote the students to learn about one another, to help the classroom function as a whole. These activities may include games, show and tell, incorporating different book genres, having/hosting a traditions day (ethnic diversity), and possibly writes poems and stories. Diversity is an important thing for students to be submerged in and a great way to encourage acceptance. 

Getting to Know Your Students

I think getting to know your students is a very important part of becoming a successful teacher. Knowing student likes and dislikes can help teachers reach students who are struggling or need to be challenged. Teachers can recommend certain books or genres to pique student interest. Our activities during class also helped me to realize that getting to know your students is important in creating a solid community where everyone feels connected regardless of difference. The “Where I’m From” poems helped me understand how students’ backgrounds are a dynamic force in the classroom. Every student has a culture and past that influences their interactions and interpretations in school. However, teachers need to know more about their students than just their preferences to fully appreciate cultural diversity in the classroom. Providing students with opportunities to discuss their reading and elaborate from their own experiences is one way to get to know students. Although many students are shy and don’t like to discuss personal experiences in front of others. For these students, reading journals might help to guide students to make connections and provide the teacher with background information. Also knowing what students do outside your class/subject-area helps. I’m in a sixth grade class at Pleasant View Magnet School for Performing Arts and since I’ve been watching electives (i.e. dance, visual arts, etc.) I’ve come to see a whole new side to my students. It gives me a greater appreciation for their interests and potential to see them outside a “traditional” classroom. I think using these interests can be used successfully to incorporate diverse elements in reading instruction and in helping engage students in your class.