The Digital Native MYTH

There is a myth about kids and technology and it is called Digital Natives.

This myth says since students have been using digital devices since they were born, they know more about computers than parents and teachers.

THIS IS CRAP!!

This generation knows all about phones, apps and how to use snapchat. But they do not have BASIC technology and computer skills.

How can I make a blanket statement like this? EASY. I am living this world.

My personal children can create anything on an ipad or a phone. My seven year old has her own You Tube channel for the videos she makes.

But if you ask these "digital natives" to find a file outside of their "my documents" folder they flounder. Ask them to step it up and use a remote location like Google Drive or Dropbox, download it to a computer, edit the file, make a copy and rename the file and then load it back to original location you might as well be speaking a different language.

The cost of the touch technology is that today's students don't know how file directories work. They don't know the importance of a file name or location. If the file that they need isn't found when they touch the photo app icon, then they can't find it.

As a teacher who is desperately trying to get students to use technology in a purposeful way in my classroom, this is beyond frustrating.  With 150 students using Photoshop and working in the Google Classroom, I spend the majority of my day not teaching design skills or even advanced software specific skills, but simple skills like working a task bar, how to save to a specific location and even opening and sending emails!!

So what is my point to my rant?

Well, I think educators and parents have bought into the myth that we are out of touch and that we have to learn something new and fancy to be "cutting edge" and to "keep up!" This myth has caused considerable angst among teachers and has started lots of conversations about retiring because teachers feel overwhelmed by their perceived lack of digital knowledge.

The reality is very different. The reality is that students are distracted by the new and shiny and that being able to create a thousand funny pictures using snapchat is not a job skill!! We as educators and parents are challenged to ground our students and children in foundational skills, even when these skills seem outdated like addition, subtraction and "save as"!

Have you tried Google Drive?

My school district has started a push for all employees to use Google Drive. As everything is in education.. innovation starts with a lot of talk and more talk and then we start slow, get scared, bury our head in the sand, desperately claw at the past and then when we are finally thrown off the edge, we see that it wasn't so bad and the "cliff" was only about a foot and that instead of drowning, we could just put our feet down.

Okay.. so that's a lot of cliche, but you get my point. Innovation doesn't come easily in education.

Well, Google Drive is a game changer. 

Here is my Google Drive for school. I have created all of these folders in the past couple of months! 

Each of the header bars is a folder. Inside each folder there are numerous documents or in the case of my class folders, I have student folders. I can't show you a class folder as my student names are listed on each file, but here is the inside of my instruction and guides folder.

What is so cool about this is that because I made the folder searchable, I was able to give the students the link to the folder (I made a tiny url) and they added my folder to their drive. So anytime I create a new guide, or as I add more guides to the folder, their folder is automatically updated!

From a work management perspective, this is a game changer.

Here is the folder of one of my student's in Art 1. As he completes his assignments, he loads his work into his folder. Because he has shared it with me, I can see his work in real time. 

And, because he gave me "can edit" rights, I can have him drop stuff into his folder from my ipad without him having to log into google.

Storage is unlimited, so while some folders like the above one only have 6 items right now, one of my folders has 168 photos! Multiply this by 160 students and you can imagine the amount to storage that would be needed for me to keep all of my students work on my device. 

So there you have it. My ringing endorsement for Google Drive. And fyi... if you haven't tried Google Docs yet, you should!