Using a variety of instructional strategies is extremely important when teaching today’s 21st Century learners. Teachers must keep in mind that students today are growing up as digital natives. Technology, whatever it may be, is their native language. Most adults, and therefore teachers, are digital immigrants. We did not grow up with the kinds of technology that our students are growing up with. While some adults embrace the use of technology, others reject it. Teachers cannot afford to think this way. We must embrace technology and use it to our advantage in the classroom. Technology has the ability to reach all modalities of learning. Visual, audio, kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal learners can all find their niche with technology. Teachers must be able to incorporate technology into their everyday teaching. Incorporating technology cannot be a one-time thing of showing a video or creating a PowerPoint presentation. Teachers must learn to seamlessly incorporate technology into the curriculum. We must evaluate the material we are teaching to our students and ask ourselves: “What is the best way for me to incorporate technology so I can reach all of my students?” Teaching is no longer a chalkboard, a strong voice, and students sitting in perfect rows hanging on to every word. With all of the audio and visual stimuli available to students today it is making teachers re-evaluate their methods.
Children today are growing up with many different experiences than I did. For example, when I first began teaching I was handed a cassette player and a box of books with cassette tapes. I was told that it was to be the listening center for my students. Sure, I knew how to work it, but my 2nd graders really struggled. I was constantly being interrupted during small group teaching to fix the cassette player which meant rewinding a tape or ejecting it and flipping it over so the story on the other side would play. One day I realized: this “tape player” makes no sense to them. They don’t understand how to use it because they probably haven’t seen one until now. Soon after, I wrote a grant for ipods. Wow, what a difference! I showed them the new “toys” and everyone was excited, many of the students telling me and one another that they have one at home. I loaded all the MP3 books onto them and did a quick presentation to each of my reading groups. A week later, they were so independent that anyone with a problem or question about the ipod went to another student! The cassette player was a form of technology from my childhood so I knew how to use it. How selfish of me to think that children born 20 years after me would grow up having the same experiences!
Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.
-Chinese Proverb
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