How many of you?

Check email daily?

Have a Facebook/Myspace page?

Have your own blog? Webpage?

Are aware of the recent discovery of a previously

unknown group of indigenous people?

Encountering Digital Natives

A How-to Guide for the 21st Century: On Speaking the Language of Blogs and Wikis

So What is a Digital Native?   A digital native is a person who has grown up in a

world surrounded by digital technology.

Who are the Digital Natives?   I am not a digital native…

  You are digital natives, or you should be at least.

  Your students will most certainly be natives to the digital world, and in some cases they may speak the digital language more fluently than you do.

William Henry Gates III One of the founding fathers of the digital native tribe, recently asked at the annual TED conference:

How do we make a teacher great?

Sadly, he doesn’t have a good answer.

Here is my suggestion for how to make better

teachers… Though I readily admit that I am not Bill

Gates…

…just a fourth grade teacher…

with a vested interest.

First

As teachers we must begin a movement for taking back our classrooms.

Second

We must must must find a way to encourage creativity and the innate

curiosity that lives in us all.

…Finally We must speak to the natives in their

language.

Cue potentially overdramatic comparison.

Speaking the Language Together

The official unveiling of your very own wiki…

meredithspeakingdigitally.pbwiki.com