When answering the previous question, I alluded to the theory that digital age students’ brains appear to be wired differently to Gen X or the Baby Boomers (or generations before) and I would like to investigate this a little further as part of my inquiry.

In her 2004 lecture ‘Educating the Net Generation’, Dr Diana Oblinger refers to the occurrence of neuroplasticity/the belief that a persons environment can alter the way that their brain is ‘wired’. Statistics (US) referred to in Dr Oblinger’s seminar show us that today’s average student spends 10,000 hours playing video games, sends 200,000 emails, watches 20,000 hours of TV, spends 10,000 on a cell phone and less than 5000 hours reading! These young people are a generation of ‘self-teaching students’ who when they hear about something go straight online to research it, they multitask without even realising that they are doing it and can be on the Internet researching, txting a friend on their cell phone and carrying on several IM conversations, all at once! These are digitally literate, mobile, always ‘on’, experiential and social beings. These are all positive attributes, however a flip side to this ‘now, now, now’ attitude is that students have very short attention spans and can quite quickly choose not to pay attention.

This is a generation who thrive on instant gratification, therefore the challenge for the teacher in today’s classroom is to keep those downloads coming in a way that will satisfy the students need for stimulation and be presented in such a way as to engage. So I think that ICT must be seen as a necessity in today’s classroom if we are going to connect with our students, encourage learning and broadcast information on a wavelength that they are already tuned into. We cannot remain “Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age) … struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” [Presky, M. On the Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)]

The further into my studies I get, the more I realise that in order to operate as a competent and successful teacher I will have to be supremely organised. ICT will go along way to helping me achieve the levels of organisation required and I fully intend to seek out and embrace any technologies out there that can make my life a little easier!