ICT IN THE CLASSROOM

DIGITAL NATIVES

Marc Prensky´s thoughts must be considered too. ‘Teachers of 21^st century are in charge of preparing children for an uncertained future’.  It is impossible to know what is going to happen in the future but we can have an idea if we think about how people live in the 21^st century. During the last fifteen years people have became digital natives and they are living a different type of life if we compare it to the adult’s childhood. Our opinion about videogames usually has a bad connotation and this is because we do not really like them, play with them and because the publicity the games have received is usually not positive. Videogames have a challenge in terms of use. The balance between use and abuse is the real fight, because it is thought that the benefits are low. From my experience I am able to say that when I give new technology assignments not only the majority of students do them, many do them several times, as compared to when I assign homework they have to do in the notebook, and there are pupils who will not complete the work.

Video games have conflicts, challenges and opposition and provide us with entertainment and pleasure. But the profit is in the rules that organise, structure and demand discipline and in the short goals that encourage us. Other benefit is that they teach us to take risks and to evaluate several situations. They allow children to do things at their own pace and the videogame award has to be reinforced by us. They permit us to learn from our actions through lots of trials. Video games have awards which are to pass to the next level and they even permit us to share experiences with others creating a cooperative atmosphere that can be linked to social nets. And if they are able to play with our emotions the experiences lived will be remembered. This is what from my point of view, is the most important thing we have to copy from videogames. The unreal world in which they are learning through playing that makes them feel different and that attracts and motivates them. This engaging atmosphere has to be copied in the classroom and teachers have to hide the goals of the exercises in favour of this magic place.

The idea of multiple attentions is getting bigger and this is something that makes our pupils different from the previous generations. The case was studied with two groups of kids. The first group was watching a movie, while the second group was playing a video game in front of another screen where the same movie was being played. The result was that both groups could tell us about the movie.

The 10 best tools: A video with tools to be used in the classroom (Spanish)

Digital Bloom's Taxonomy: Stages to acquire digital competence

ICT in the CLIL Classroom on Prezi