When Digital Natives are a few bits short of a byte

Marc Prensky's article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (PDF) seemed to have been well regarded by my classmates. Myself included. And why wouldn’t it? Save for a few of the younger M Teachs, we (older students like myself) are all in the same boat. However, on my first day of prac I noticed the Natives are not equal; I realised there were Immigrants amongst the Natives. In other words, not all kids were as familiar with technology as some of their other classmates.

It is assumed most kids have an aptitude for playing games and navigating across a keyboard. I landed a Stage 3 class for my prac. Our first lesson was maths. The teacher started with a multiplication game to warm the students up.

Following this the students took their seats and went about some maths problems via a worksheet. And the end of the class the boys were quizzed again on their multiplication tables, this time as a team via a computer game, Balloon Invaders on the IWB. The game involved three boys. Two in front of the IWB and one on the teacher's PC, operating the keyboard -- space bar and arrow keys. The game was first person shooter-esque (I dont know my games parlance, sorry) where a character on the ground with a gun shoots balloons with particular numbers that drop from the sky. Each balloon has a number relating to a particular multiplication table. In this case they were numbers pertaining to the 7x tables. So when the game starts a multiplication is presented to the Students: for example 7x4. Naturally the boys as a team quickly call out the correct answer and then keyboard guy takes aim and shoots at the balloon which has 28 written on it.

But of course there was as snag. I noticed not all boys were quick with the use of the space bar (shoot) or the left arrow keys, used to aim the gun to fire the balloons. Consequently, although the teams had the right answer they could not accurately shoot down the balloon with the right answer. Instead, the poor aim of the keyboarder for 7x11 multiple took out other multiples of 7, such as 54 or 21 and thus registering low scores.

So, after such a long rant, what is my point? Well the technology may be well and good, but if the children are not on an equal footing in how to use it, some students may feel alienated when they do in fact have a grasp of the subject or learning concept on paper. It may be assumed all young kids have grown up with computers, but not all have played games and have quick hand-eye coordination. Worth keeping that in mind when picking games for students to play.

...While on the topic of maths and technology, YouTube can really come to the fore in explaining difficult concepts to students. Like this excellent example on Fractions:

Image: Multiplication tables posted on wall above teacher's desk