Blog 1: Are you a Digital Native or a Digital Immigrant?

Christian Mason
Grade 9-12 SDC-CH teacher at Rosemont High School, Sacramento City Unified School District

I view myself as a digital native and have been around technology almost my entire life. Many an hour was wasted in my childhood playing Atari, or mario brothers on the original nintendo system. Like most children throughout this nation I was raised with a healthy dose of television. Computers have also been a part of my life since the late 80's and early 90's. As an adult I use technology more than ever. Email is my preferred method of communication for both work and play. Researching anything and everything is done with a google search. My cell phone is almost always at my side. I still enjoy the occasional shooter game and love watching movies on my computer.

While technology is not in everyday use in my classroom, it certainly is used on a regular basis. I show videos that go along with my lessons to give the students visuals for vague or hard to understand concepts. For the last few days I have used a documentary on the French and Indian War for my history class. Having my students read about some obscure battle that took place long ago is next to useless, but to have them see the techniques and difficulties that each side faced brings it to life. For language arts they type their monthly book reports electronically and have the option to send it in via email or print off a hard copy. Researching topics for essays is almost exclusively done on computers. I use zangle(a software program used for grading and reports) to show parents exactly what is expected of their children on a daily basis. I still use hard copies of progress reports and letters home, but try to incorporate electronic communication whenever possible. This would lead me to assume that my students would view me as a digital native.