Questions & Answers

Question: What is a ‘digital native’?

Answer: Nowadays we have the first true generation of kids who grew up / are growing up with mobile phones, interactive games, iPod’s,  personal computers, and the Internet. These kids and young people (aged 5 - 25 years) who were born into the digital age can be called digital natives.

Digital natives have some common characteristics. For instance, they usually like:

1. Recieving information quickly from more than one source
2. Multi-tasking + Parellel processing
3. Pictures, sounds and videos rather than text
4. Interacting in “real time”

These characteristics have impact on their way of learning that we, teachers, should take into consideration when planning lessons.

1. They like when learning is instant, relevant and fun.
2. They are not used to looking at a lot of text!
3. They require a lot of visuals.
4. They also need stimulation both aural and visual.
5. They need things in small pieces.
6. They are used to interacting – be it through chat or games or just surfing!

Most of our students of English are digital natives. That is why we must reflect this in the classroom – our modern students must be involved which means we should do a lot of hands on activities.