The Digital Generation

PART ONE: The Digital Generation

Before we discuss technology tools and ways to integrate them into various content - it's important to talk about who you will be teaching and what you will be teaching them (students and standards).

How would you describe your future students? What type of learners will they be? What expectations will they have for their learning environment, for their teachers, for their community? You'll be teaching the millenials -- or the digital generation. On an index card, describe your future students.

Marc Prensky is an educational speaker who discusses this generation in great detail. If you were born after 1982 - you are a part of this generation - you are a digital native. Most of your teachers were digital immigrants. What does that mean for education? For understanding learning styles and teaching strategies? Where does instructional technology fit?

For Fun - see where you fall on the Beloit College Mindset List.


PART TWO: Your portfolio:
It's time to start building a foundation for your web-based portfolio. We'll be adding to this electronic document throughout the semester. We'll start with a topic upon which you are an expert: yourself. Today we'll be building the structure of your website and the autobiography page of your portfolio.

Once you've created your account, go to http://pages.google.com and login with your gmail account information. We'll walk you through the rest.

Your finished autobiography page (due Tuesday, August 28 at the beginning of class) should include the following:
1. A brief (1-2 paragraph) introduction to yourself – current information, career plans, and where you see yourself in 5 years.
2. A link to your resume.
3. At least 3 external links to places of interest.
4. 3-5 pictures

For Tuesday:
1. Complete your autobiography page and publish it to the web. To access your pages to continue working on them, go to Google Pages and log in with your google ID.
2. If you need additional help with completing your autobiography page you can use this link to help: http://pages.google.com/-/about.html#using or you can send me an email: gbthomas@uga.edu
3. If you're not sure what to write - view samples from summer semester.
4. I'm running a little contest for most creative, education-related t-shirt from VistaPrint -- don't forget to enter!