Digital Education

MINI CRITIQUE By Isagani Cruz (The Philippine Star) | Updated

November 27, 2014 - 12:00am

On or about December 1910, human character changed, the British

writer Virginia Woolf famously wrote in 1924. Were she living today,
she would agree with Marc Prensky who said in 2001 that, on or about
1985, the world changed.

While Woolf was talking about how writers view life, however,
Prensky was talking about how life itself has changed. On or about
1985, children were born into a world with Internet. These children
(now no older than in their late twenties) cannot live without the Web.

Prensky distinguished between two types of human beings

digital natives and digital immigrants. Digital natives do not need to
learn how to use the Internet; the Web is in their bones. Digital
immigrants, on the other hand, have to take time to find out what to do
with a computer.

If we may use a simplistic example, if you give a digital native a

mobile phone, s/he will be downloading apps in less than five minutes.
If you give a digital immigrant the same mobile phone, s/he will
probably be entering phone numbers and texting friends after taking a
long time to figure out how the phone works.

There are many other simplistic ways to distinguish the two types
of human beings. Digital natives share images instantaneously; digital
immigrants email. Digital natives ask Siri to get them a pizza; digital
immigrants go to a restaurant to eat a pizza. Digital natives who drive
cars change routes according to Waze; digital immigrants curse the
traffic. Digital natives who do not have cars call Uber or Grab Taxi;
digital immigrants stand on the street to hail a cab.

These are stereotypes, but the basic truth is undeniable: there is

a digital divide between the generations born before and after 1985.

There is another classification coined after Prensky digital

aliens. As Ira Kaufman explained it in 2011, digital natives (also known
as Millennials, Net Generation, Gen Y) are 10 to 29 years old, digital
immigrants are 30 to 60 years old, and digital aliens are 45 to 70 years
old. Digital immigrants at least use social media, but digital aliens are
stuck in email, texting, and surfing, if at all.

Prensky (as well as several others after him) outlined the crucial
problem with modern education due to the digital revolution. In the
USA and other technologically advanced countries, digital immigrants
are teaching digital natives. In the Philippines (where most educators
are not even on Facebook), digital aliens are teaching digital natives.

Why is this important to us? Because the K to 12 curriculum, as

well as the new General Education Curriculum, assumes that students
are digital natives and that teachers should not be digital aliens but
digital immigrants.

Think of those in Kindergarten today; they were all born in the

21st century. Think of those in college today; they were all born after
1985. Now, think of all the teachers you know; except for those that
finished their undergraduate education in 2005 or later, they are digital
immigrants at the very least and most likely even digital aliens.

Let us take another simplistic example. A non-digital teacher asks

students Who What Where and When questions. All of her or his
students key in a word or phrase into their mobile phones and the
answers are there. In other words, any question that needs only
information can be answered through the Web. How many of the
questions actually asked in classrooms are merely Who What Where
and When questions (technically called Remembering questions in a
taxonomy or classification named after Benjamin Bloom)? (Blooms
Taxonomy has the following stages: remembering, understanding,
applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating.)

There have been studies of the type of questions Filipino teachers

ask in our classrooms. Maria Lourdes S. Bautista, for example, in her
book Teacher Talk and Student Talk (1994) discovered that Filipino
teachers rarely go beyond the Remembering stage.

Digital natives do not need to be taught how to answer

Remembering questions, because the Web remembers for them. Sadly,
many teachers remain digital immigrants or aliens even when they
move up the taxonomic ladder to Understanding. The Web does not
have only answers to factual questions; it also holds a lot of answers to
Understanding. Whole term papers, for example, could be and have
been written just cutting and pasting from various Websites. Even
Facebook, despite the predominance of photos of food and landscapes,
sometimes hosts profound discussions on the Understanding level.

In fact, Applying, Analyzing, and Evaluating can be done by

digital natives quite easily using the Web, which has a number of
professors from the worlds top universities sharing their lessons,
books, articles, and ideas with the public. Students still need teachers
to guide them on which sites are most useful and which sites merely
distract them from what is truly essential, but by and large, students
today can navigate the Web rationally and with maturity.

What, then, is the role of the Filipino teacher in a classroom real

or virtual when students can learn by themselves? The role is in the
highest level of Blooms Taxonomy Creating. This is clear from the K
to 12 curriculum. (To be continued)
CESAR S. ARENAS JR. METH II:
Educational Technology 2
BSEd (Uniting)
Submitted to: Prof. Al Laurio

REACTION PAPER
Digital Education
MINI CRITIQUE / by: Isagani Cruz

The explanations of Prensky and other people cited in the article of Isagani Cruz
concerning the types of human beings with regard to the different generations and
technology, are relevant in the present situation of learners in our society. But in the
Philippines that is considered as one of the developing countries in the world, who has citizens
and families who are not totally drifted by the fast-phasing world-wide transitions in technology,
this is just slightly relevant.

Philippines is composed mainly of agricultural lands and rich natural resources. When
we will consider the geographical aspect of our country, it is composed of higher number of
individuals living in rural areas than that of in urban areas. And because of this, in connection
with the technological advancement and the use of technology as a source of information,
Cruzs explanation regarding the types of human beings is not as relevant as compared with the
real-life scenarios in our country. For example, here in Quezon Province, not all students in
elementary and high school have cellphones, laptops, and computers. Only those students who
can afford to buy can have these gadgets. Frequently, only the students in urban areas can
afford to have these. Most of the students who are living in rural areas are poor and less
fortunate to have one of these products of technology. In connection with the types of human
beings that were cited by Prensky and the others, for me, not all students who were born on and
after 1985 can be considered as digital natives because of the fact that not all of the students
have an access to these kinds of gadget, and most of the students in our country are living in
rural areas.

Moreover, it is true that the individuals who were born on or after 1985 can be
considered as digital natives, but not all of them. I think, article of Cruz happens to be like that
because he focused only on the usual scenarios in urban areas where laws, programs and
projects for education are primarily implemented by our government, but he forgot the real-life
situations of other Filipinos in rural areas. In that sense, Cruzs explanation is only applicable for
the learners who are living in the urban areas of our country. Likewise, even though our country
has more individual learners living in rural areas, they prioritize and take to consider more the
learners living in urban, where the products of modernization primarily take place. In that case, it
is easier for our government to implement a new curriculum like K-12 program (which is
promoting global excellence) in the urban areas because the technologies are accessible in
those areas.

We all know that there is a big difference when an individual is living in a rural area
rather than the one living in urban. They differ in culture, traditions, way of living and other
factors related to these. And these are the ones that really affect the learning preferences of an
individual living in a certain area, aside from the financial status of ones family and his literacy
in using new technology. That is why there is what we call a contextualization in the learning
materials and workbooks in different areas in the Philippines, that adapts the culture, tradition,
way of living, and activities of the residents in a certain area like city and municipality.

Regarding the remembering and understanding levels in that of the Blooms

Taxonomy of Education, this does not necessarily mean that the students in the Philippines who
know something in computer can already reach these remembering and understanding levels in
learning. It still depends on the curiosity of the learner and his orientation in using the computer
and gadgets. It is true that other students can just view the answers to the teachers question
using their phones. But in reality, not all of them will remember the answers sooner or later.
Likewise, others can view the answers to the teachers question using their phones, but will not
really understand them. Those can be possible. Based on my observations, in the province of
Quezon specifically in Lucena City, where mostly of the areas are urban and many of the youth
in elementary and secondary levels are using computers, they only use computer in gaming and
interacting in the social networking sites where they can have an access in random posts and
links. If I will give an overview regarding these instances, I can say that they only like, share,
tweet, post, and interact with the things and stuff that suffice and suit their interests and
preferences. They are probably still in the young age and most of their preferences are perhaps
not to study the way the schools want it to be.

Before an idea regarding education and learning should be accepted, it must first seek
to know the possible stakeholders and beneficiaries of learning in a wider scope. I am talking
about the real general situations of students living in our country and our schools availability on
the instructional materials and technology for teaching. Our country is composed of learners
which mostly came from rural areas. Most of them are deprived of having gadgets and
computers. I gathered information regarding this situation in facebook, and I collected the
opinions of the teachers who also belong to the generation of the digital natives as referred to
Prenskys classification of human beings. And I can say that there are lapses in the column
article of Isagani Cruz regarding digital education, and it was explained in detailed above.
Perhaps, it can be really relevant to our country if our schools have these kinds of technology.

On the other hand, I agree to him that the teachers should become digital immigrants
who can adapt and be updated on the timely situations, issues, knowledge and information in a
local, national and world-wide scope. It is for the teachers advantage and preparation, to
prevent difficulty in handling his class. Who knows, sooner or later, our government can provide
these kinds of gadget and computers for the Filipino students. And who knows, sooner or later,
these gadgets are easily accessible in almost all areas in rural. It is better to be prepared than
not. And it is good to assume that all of your students are digital natives, because there is
always a possibility that a teacher can encounter one or few of this kind in his class. And in this
case, the teachers responsibility is to guide these students in processing which of the
information that these digital natives acquired from the internet are important, relevant, true and
correct. Also, it is advisable that the preparation should primarily start with the teachers because
they are the only resilient individuals in educating the learners.

Moreover, a teacher can be an efficient teacher to his students if he knows more things
on what he is teaching than his students. Inside the classroom, the teacher is the main provider
of information and learning that are needed by his students in his life and future career. He is
the guide on the students learning and the main facilitator of information inside the classroom.
And I also agree that the teacher should perform his duty as an agent of change, and that
change can be found in the creating level of the Blooms Taxonomy of Education. And to be
able to do that, a teacher should be proficient and efficient enough in performing the very
difficult requirements, duties and responsibilities in nurturing his learners future.

A teacher should learn to create and recreate himself before he can efficiently teach his
students how to create.