Digital natives think and learn differently than in the past due to growing up immersed in technology. They are multi-taskers who socialize online and think using information and communication technologies. For educational reform to be effective, it must provide opportunities for digital natives to get connected, construct knowledge in personally meaningful ways using various modalities, and demonstrate their skills creatively using technology. Educators and students should work together to discover how technology can enhance the teaching and learning process.

1. Digital Natives iinnovate Training 6/8/2009 Dee Susong Melissa Tothero Mark Kelly Sheryl Southwell

2. What are Digital Natives? Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. —Marc Prensky Have lived their entire lives interacting with digital tools

3. Multi-taskers

4. Think differently (developed different neural pathways)

5. Personalization - work to assert themselves in the sea of information

6. Socialize online

7. Think using information/communication technologies.

8. How Do They Learn? actively

9. visually

10. kinesthetically

11. socially

12. technologically

13. collaboratively

14. Implications for Educational Reform Information and Communication Technologies enable learners to: get connected. construct knowledge in personally meaningful ways. demonstrate their intellectual competence and creativity using a variety of modalities. ICT provides the essential conditions in which Digital Native learn.

15. I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. – Albert Einstein Educators and students must be given opportunities to co-discover creative ways to maximize the potential that technology brings to the teaching-learning process.

16. Implications for Educational Reform We are all learners and we are all teachers. –Harvard President, Drew Gilpin Faust welcomes the new class of 2011 to Harvard on September 13, 2007