A Digital Immigrant in a Digital Native's World

The Written Assignment Kindergarten is my world. Kinder es mi mundo . I have been an early childhood educator for eight years. I have learned, cried, taught, and loved. My students enter my classroom as babies and leave as children. My children are blank slates. They come from backgrounds unforeseen by most; they have difficulty in communicating as they were never taught how to talk and how to share. At school, we teach them in their home language and a new language; whether that be English and Spanish or Spanish and English . We are changing their lives; expanding their horizons; creating bilingual and bi-literate humans. We are their beginning. We set the foundation for their years to come. Without us, they fall between the cracks; their foundational skills are missing; they do not know anything about who they are. I don’t teach to teach. I teach to impact. To create. To explore. To laugh. Like Kelly Reed, I make the time to allow students to create. They are kindergar

Let Them Be Little

This I Believe… ·         Albert Einstein, “An Ideal Service to Our Fellow Man” ·         Brian Grazer, “Disrupting My Comfort Zone” ·         Jennie, “Knowing Where a Person Is From” My Core Beliefs About Learning and Teaching and How These Impact the World 1.      Teaching is a service. Teachers teach to make an impact, to change a life, to awaken learning in little humans that will last a lifetime. Teachers awaken a lifetime love of reading, exploring, and a desire to change the world. 2.      Learning happens in the risk zone. All individuals both big and small need to be kept in their risk zone (where challenges happen) in order to acquire learning. Being in a comfort zone is where an individual knows what they need and feels comfortable staying there. The danger zone is where an individual is too uncomfortable to learn, let alone do anything. Yet, the risk zone is just right. Comfort is there with a challenge to learn, a challenge to change, and a c

Beyond Pink and Blue: Fourth Graders get fired up about Pottery Barn’s gender stereotypes Robin Cooley Students were appalled by the Pottery Barn Kids catalog that they were receiving in their homes. After learning about stereotypes in their fourth-grade classroom, these students noticed that the Pottery Barn catalog was biased towards gender stereotypes of pink and blue. All girl items were pink and all boy items were blue. The question then was how do you change the stereotypes put forth by popular brands and stores? “Newton Public Schools is actively working to create an anti-bias/anti-racist school environment. In fact, beginning in 4 th grade, we teach all students about the cycle of oppression that creates and reinforces stereotypes,” (Cooley, 248). Children in Ms. Cooley’s fourth grade class took part in this new curriculum as they learned much about how stereotypes can be unlearned in a society that teaches them and reinforces them. Family was a large topi

Chloe's Construction Chloe is the latest and great holiday toy from Hasbro. She can dig, she can drive, she gets dirty. Sold in a set with an excavator, a dump truck, and tractor. Flagger sold separately.

Duolingo Duolingo is a program in which any person anywhere can learn a new language of their choosing at their own pace. With 23 languages offered, Duolingo creates language specific programs beginning with basic vocabulary words and building upon that information through each lesson. Each lesson contains speaking, listening, multiple choice, and translation pieces. Individuals can find out their exact answers and scores immediately. Duolingo keeps track of how many questions are answered correctly and incorrectly, and the individuals receives rewards as they learn. It can be used individually or set up for a classroom experience. The perks of Duolingo is that it is a website, and an available app on both Apple and Android products. Most importantly, it is free! This upcoming school year, I plan to attach it to my class website for parents to use to help them in learning either English or Spanish, whichever language they need assistance in. I hope that it no

I am a certified Disney enthusiast. I have always have been and believe that I always will be. In fact, coming up on my 30 th birthday, I have asked for a DisneyParks Dooney and Burke wristlet. Being so in love with Disney, I am connected to animated children’s culture in and out of my kindergarten classroom. As a child, I was a young girl in love with every new Disney character and movie that was released. Each of my birthday parties was based on a different character beginning at the age of three. It began with Minnie Mouse, then Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”, then Belle from “Beauty and the Beast”. This continued with Cinderella from “Cinderella”, Mulan from “Mulan”, and so on. I first traveled to Walt Disney World in Florida with my parents at the age of five. We stayed at a resort on the property, the golf club based off Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. While it no longer exists today, I can still remember every part of it…the carved dwarfs in the trees, the brow

What do you make of the (divergent) positions of Boyd and Prensky (per our discussion in class and/or per the article above?)  Where do you stand on the “digital native” terminology? As stated in my previous blog, I am a digital immigrant. Born in 1987, I believe that Prensky is incorrect in his statement that a digital native is born after 1980. Yet, I also do not agree with Boyd’s representation either that it is dangerous to assume that children and youth are automatically informed. The title of a digital native and a digital immigrant is not cut and dry. There are gray lines in these definitions and how the world views both groups. Boyd discusses how everyone has something to offer when it comes to technology. Technology is ever changing and we are all constant learners. I am in agreement with her statement that we are all constant learners, yet children today are born with different brains than those of times before. Research states that children are not the same as the

A digital native  is said to be an individual born after 1980. Someone who is unaware of the world that their parents, grandparents, and elders had grown up in. Marc Prensky  discusses digital natives and their brain structure in his 2001 article, stating how there are currently two cultures of people in the world. Much of these two cultures is developed from attitude and preference in learning. Digital immigrants  grew up in a pre-digital era. They are different learners who had to learn a second language of digital media literacy. In reading  Marc Prensky's article, I believe that a digital native is not a person born after 1980. I was born in 1987 , and at about to be 30 years of age, believe that I am a digital immigrant. I grew up in the age where yes, there was an Apple computer in our classroom, but we were learning to type and look at a keyboard. I remember Type to Learn  in library class where we had to find the letters to type. I remember when the home computer become a

My name is Allison Campbell. I teach Dual Language Kindergarten at Carl G. Lauro Elementary School in Providence. I have taught there for 5 years and enjoy every minute of the dual language program. I live in West Greenwich on a farm and am spending most of my summer at home. There is always a lot to do on a farm. Trips to the beach will be mixed in with that...hopefully lots of them! Other than that, I enjoy cooking and baking, hiking, and reading. I look very forward to reading a book for pleasure this summer.