AVATAR: A FEW LESSONS ON TEACHING Part II

Avatar conveyed several messages, some of which have been interpreted as offensive. However, I received one positive key educational message:

All teachers on this planet should probably gather intel on their Net Geners and leverage that intel in their teaching strategies, maybe even teach them English. Teachers can be temporarily transported into the rich, diverse, techy world of their students.

Here are 3 steps to consider in this process:

1. Understand your students: You need to thoroughly understand them and their culture, behaviors, habits, and latest technologies, even iPad, should it take off. To ignore your students’ culture, mindset, and world is unwise. You should really get to know your students one-on-one and as a group. Collect “intel” on their interests, intelligence strengths, learning styles, and the way they think and behave.

2. Leverage their characteristics, behaviors, and habits: Use your “intel” of their characteristics to design and custom tailor your teaching strategies for them. Consider each characteristic and how one or more teaching techniques can draw on their specific interests, intelligences, and learning styles. You should be sensitive to their individual strengths and weaknesses and try to build on the former before helping them to compensate for the latter. Your strategies should involve a one-size-fits-one approach.

3. Teach new content with different strategies: The connections between you and your students and their characteristics and your teaching strategies create a foundation of trust and credibility. Now you can add new content and other strategies to your teaching. Experiment with the latest technologies. Your students are now on board and will eagerly assist you on that journey. Solicit their input. Involve them in decisions in your learner-centered environment.

With or without Avatar, these steps can improve your teaching of this bright-eyed-and–bushy-tailed group of frisky Net Geners you see almost every day. The extraordinary experience of Avatar just punctuated the importance of these thoughts.

For further intel on teaching strategies matched to Net Gener learner characteristics, checkout Articles 2008a and 2009a on my Web under Publications (see link in margin to right). 

As always, let me know your thoughts, especially if you are an Avatar fan. Have a fantastic teaching experience this spring!

COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC

Are the NET Geners NET Savvy?

I suspect many of you already have discovered the answer to this blog's question. For those of you who haven't, read on Macduff.
We already know that your students have grown up with the technology; their familiarity with most forms of electronic gadgetry is second nature. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by all of the toys and tools of the digital age (Carlson, 2005). The technology affects everything they do and buy. They expect information to be at their fingertips.
However, (WARNING: Here it comes. Watch out!) they are not necessarily “net savvy” (Lorenzo & Dziuban, 2006). They are exposed to tons of information, but lack an understanding of how to find, evaluate, use, and present that information. They need to be taught information literacy and strong critical thinking skills (Oblinger & Hawkins, 2006; Rockman & Associates, 2004). These deficiencies should be addressed in some way by your institution and in your teaching.
As noted in a previous blog, a digital divide exists based on machine vintage, connectivity, online skills, autonomy and freedom of access, computer support, and interest in using the technology (Hawkins & Oblinger, 2006; Oblinger, 2008a). For those students who are neither tech nor net savvy due to class, nationality, or other factors that limit access, special instruction or training sessions should be provided to give them opportunities to be brought up to the same level of their more proficient peers.

COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC