Are you a Digital Native or an Immigrant?

   How is it going, friends? I feel so recharged thanks to these sunny days and I am so ready to tell you about the last lesson of 21st Teacher Training.

   At the first part of the lesson, we have discussed the terms "technophobe, digital native and digital immigrant" within our groups. Technophobe is the term used for someone who is afraid of new technologies. The reason for that kind of a phobia may be a bad experience that the person had online. 

Most of us are born into a digital world where everything is done online, which makes us a digital native. However, older people who have learnt digital terms, tools and websites at older ages, which is called digital immigrants. They may be learnt about digital world because the professional life demands employees to be digital literate so that they can  improve their work, relations, and products. 

 

 Later on, we have discussed about digital problems that we may face with and what can be done to minimize them to some extent. Our friends have listed some problems and I think the most important one was the inequality of opportunity to technological materials. Not every school is able to provide each class with computers and projection machines, so this prevent both teachers and students from engaging with digital worlds. Melda teacher suggested that teachers can bring their laptops to the class and use projection machine effectively, as she was used to do before joining IÜ-C. 

 Another problem was the importance of students' cognitive level while using technology. You shouldn't use an activity just because it is fun or interesting. It shouldn't be neither low nor higher than their cognitive level, instead it should be about what they have been taught and digital tools should be used as a mean to enhance that knowledge. We should give them the needed space to explore and experiment it.

Then, Melda teacher introduced us 4 new very beneficial digital tools to use in our teachings. First one was Wordwall, which is a website that allows you to create lots of activities with the free given templates. The second one was Wordart, which is an online word cloud that enables you to create images about the intended meaning of poem, story, or song, etc. Do you remember the activity where we were given an image of a angel and I couldn't find it to show you guys? Melda teacher told us that she have created it using Wordart. It is a pretty fancy website! The third one was Canva, do you remember that I have shared a quotation made with Canva? You can benefit from it in multiple ways. The last one was Edu.Gloster, which enables you to create multimedia posters. I loved this one because it is really practical and entertaining both for creating and for using in class. 

 This will be all for today. Till next time, be happy and healthy :)))