Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

The article on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky truly speaks to both an older and newer generation. The first generation are the ones that did not grow up with technology as readily available. They found different ways to solve solutions. As they moved closer to the 21^st century they not only had to adapt but they were also getting more involved in technology. They are immigrants in the sense that they are moving to something that is not native to them but they can learn to adapt. The other group of people are the natives they grew up in the tech era. Their time with technology rules most of their day. They also heavily rely on it to solve their issues. I myself would obviously fall in the category of a Digital Native since I have been using tech for as long as I could remember. I have also seen the Digital Immigrant struggle with their accent when their teaching. Last semester I sat through a lecture with a former Manhattan College student that was a computer scientist during the Cold War. He spoke on how when he was coding he would write his code on a piece of paper and send it through a machine. Today we type some commands on a computer and run it. Everyone in the class was simply confused as to how this could possibly be done. At this point we just had no idea on what he was talking about. The idea of having a Digital Native methodology is forcing us to rethink our previous teaching methods. For example using a calculator versus a computer. A calculator is something on the older side while a computer with wolfram alpha has more options. I believe it allows for a more in depth learning experience. One question I have is obviously there is a large gap between The Digital Natives and Immigrants but how will that gap look in the year 2040? Yes technology is going to keep advancing but will be able to adapt to it much better so the line between native and immigrant is blurred. 
Edit
I will be redesigning Thinglink. This has made me think of taking the site and add details to it that would make for an easier experience. Often times a user will get annoyed of random suggestions or pop-ups, they just want to complete their task as quick as possible. Removing suggestions and ratings would provide for a better experience. For the Digital immigrants icons for certain tasks have changed over the years they may not know what three horizontal lines mean. So adding to that could help certain users out. Thinglink already seems like a great platform but it is missing key components to make it even better. 

Instructional Designer

The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia or CTML for short claims there are two channels for processing information which are auditory and visual. There is limited channel capacity and learning is an active process of filtering, selecting, organizing and integrating information. Mayer also claims there is a principle known as modality principle. This states that people learn more depth from words and pictures opposed to just words. Once moving images are incorporated the user’s ability to gain information is dependent on the cognitive demand.

Being an instructional designer and managing a project design cognitive load could have a huge impact on your approaches. I would have to consider what types of tools I would use and if they feature static images and words. For example if less extraneous cognition is used while looking at a static image then there should be an increase in generative processing. The user should be able to dive deeper into the image and make better more thought provoking assumptions. So while designing my project as an instructional designer I would think about utilizing more static images to move learning forward. Another principle is the signaling principle. We often see this when instructors use certain phrase, highlights or graphs to show importance of information. I would claim having more signaling in a project is a good thing. It reduces the chance of skipping over information and overlooking the points the instructor wants to get across. According to Haslam and Hamilton cognitive load is important when designing instructional materials. The overall goal is to design instructional materials that will lessen the cognitive load on the user. Speaking from personal experience the incorporation of technology in the classroom could only have positive effects.

Growing up my elementary and high school were very behind technology wise.  Only on certain days we were able to use technology or have different methods of learning. Otherwise it was very cookie cutter. On those certain days you could tell students were actually engaged in learning. The information they retained made sense. I believe there will be a negative impact on a students ability to learn and retain information if we are not incorporating multimedia in the classroom. Me being a person that likes to learn visually with more hands on projects sees multimedia as a positive. As an instructional designer using several methods/tools that makes learning more natural is a goal.

Schrader, Peter G. "DOES MULTIMEDIA THEORY APPLY TO ALL STUDENTS? THE IMPACT OF MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATIONS ON SCIENCE LEARNING." Journal of Learning and Teaching in Digital Age. University of Nevada, 2016. Web. 18 Feb. 2017.