Word clouds!

I made this word cloud last week using text written by Marc Prensky (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001) at wordle.net and amazingly I see my title in large letters!  No, not Sharon, but my new identity since becoming a student last year; I'm now recognise myself as one of the Digital Immigrants Prensky refers to!

After reading the article (exposing my true Digital Immigrant 'accent', by downloading and printing it off the Internet, reading and highlighting the important parts!), it gives clear recommendations of how the Natives and Immigrants can help each other and co-exist.  Prensky is imparting the idea that Digital Immigrant teachers of today would be wise to design lessons that include use of familiar tools that students know and use regularly in their digital worlds.  The future needs of  learners should be identified, and direction towards this end should be speedily communicated, using familiar terms and language, demonstrating safety and etiquette; thus enabling students to converse successfully in tomorrow's diverse society where they will live and work.  Collaborative platforms where both students and teachers learn from each other should be used and teachers should praise the cohort of Digital Natives as they coach the teacher in the practical use and application of digital facilities.

Mature-aged students of today are products of an education that was delivered according to the Victorian, Taylor-style industrial system that was designed to teach 'at' the masses where they had to individually listen to or read, and remember facts to regurgitate at a later stage.  True to Digital Immigrant form, I have printed off much of the first two weeks course work from moodle and experimented with many of the applications to trial ideas before daring to expose myself on my Blog for all to see.  I recognise this as procrastination and fear of looking like a fool, but realise today that this Blog is my experiment.  I understand now that as students, we are producing individual work and ideas under a collaborative platform.  This is real eLearning and most of us are learning so many new, very user friendly, educational features and applications that are building our eLearning language to share in a classroom!  Thank you!