Digital Natives Debate

My students are a mix of ages and backgrounds and many do not fit the learner profile assumed in many of the readings. My students come from a variety of cultural and educational backgrounds. I have “digital natives” in their 40s and “immigrants” in their teens. In Broome we also have a mix of external and internal students. “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” discusses the “digital divide” (p. 6); many external students in my context have limited access to technology and therefore often have limited skills and confidence with technologies. What all the students have in common is a desire to learn in community. Using technology must therefore provide ways for them to learn and study collaboratively. Enabling this to happen presents a significant challenge.
A further reason for enabling collaborative learning is that employment skills in the twenty first century require it. “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” identifies communication, collaboration, creativity, leadership and technological proficiency as being essential employability skills (p.6). Obviously the only way students will learn these skills in by educators actually teaching these skills and providing scaffolded opportunities for collaborative practice.
One way I have begun to address this is through the use of Elluminate which can be described as an online classroom that enables delivery by more traditional lecture based learning but also provides ways of encouraging group learning. Two problems that frequently crop up are access to supporting technologies and students who cannot make it to assigned Elluminate times as they have work or family commitments. These students therefore cannot take part in real time collaborative learning activities. Blogs and Wikis and Discussion Boards provide avenues for collaborative work and as all students have access to Blackboard and the internet there no technology barriers so these provide opportunities for collaboration. The Chat function on Blackboard may not be overly suitable for a whole class tool may also enable small group collaboration. Elluminate could be used as a tool for taking students on a web tour demonstrating how to set up a Blog and how to access the class Wiki. This is an area that I would like to experiment with next semester.

The Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience (March 2009), Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World, www. clex.org.uk.