Rene’s thoughts…

 ”Craning for a book” by Your Guide (Flickr)

Here is my Inspiration Concept Map. It is a an overview of both the Prensky article detailing about Digital Natives and Digitam Immigrants and the Bennett et al article which is a critical overview of Prensky’s ideas.

After reading both articles, I am tending to side with Sue Bennett and her other collegues, who point out many many floors in the Prensky’s article and his theory itself. Bennett et al make very obvious statements about Prensky’s research showing how many holes in his work do exist. There is a significant lack of emperical evidence to back up his bold statements.

Prensky puts a major emphasis on using technology in the classroom as a way of teaching, I do not discourage the use of technology in the classroom, but I believe that technology should be used as an additional teaching method, not become the only teaching strategy like Prensky states. This is where Bennett et al make it clear how general Prensky writes in his article.

There is a very significant over generalisation and criticism of teachers in Prensky’s article. He states that if teachers do not use or do not want to use technology in the classroom they are labelled ‘Lazy’ and ‘Dumb’. I would hate to think that that is what i will be called if i don’t use technology 24/7.

There are many more examples that Bennett et al make clear from the Prensky article that are questionable. But I don’t need to state them, it is wise to read both of them for yourself and make up your own mind. It would be interesting to find out what you think.

There are 3 questions we have to answer in this course everyweek for the blog.

The first question is: Which learning styles does this ICT support? Using the program Inspiration and allowing students to create their own concept maps allows for many different learning styles. It supports visual and kinesthetic learners, where students can play around and use their imagination to create a learning document. The visual learners are able to gain the information they need to learn from the inspiration mindmap they have just created or the teacher has shown them. The program is a wonderful program that is easy to use and very interactive.

The second question is: How could this ICT be implementd as a good cognitive tool within the learning environment? I believe the use of technology in the classroom is a great idea. However i do not believe it is the only way to teach. It is up to the teacher making the decisions about how and when to use the technology, but i believe you could definately using for some learning engagements to make the lessons more interesting and also by using technology that the students are familiar with. Using inspiration in the classroom is a wonderful teaching tool, that allows teachers to convey information in a new light. It becomes captivating to the students and engages their senses. The students are now using technology that is familiar to them ie: computers and programs. By using this technology students are gaining deeper meaning.

The third question is: How is this ICT enabling the development of creativity? The use of technology in the classroom enables students to become creative with the amount of programs out there in the world. The use of the program inspiration is a wonderful program that allows students to create their own maps and plans with their own ideas, but is also very educational at the same time. Paint on windows is another fun program where students can create pictures and be inspired to go above and beyond.

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