Abstract:

Since Prensky has postulate the division between “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants” in his famous article (Prensky, 2001), the worldwide educational community has been trying to identify itself as one or another. Being an “Immigrant” is something uncomfortable for many teachers because the immigrant word expresses the idea of a person who leaves one country and wants to settle permanently in another. Teachers are placed where they must be: in the students’ world. In other words, they are “native”. Teachers exist to work with students. Together they jointly play a choreography in order to achieve their goals: one wants to teach, the other wants to learn. There is no teaching process disconnect to the learning process. One role needs the other, one process depends on the other. Technology is a powerful tool. But still is a tool to be learned as other many tools we as a teacher had been working in our face-to-face or virtual classes. Prensky’s striking article has been promoting broad reflection in the academic community and has had effects beyond the Educational field. Prensky's work has won repercussions, followers, and opponents.
The goal of our paper is to discuss concepts related to the original work of Prensky in 2001 as well as to his other contributions to the present day. We also contrast and discuss ideas presented by other authors such as Mark Bauerlein, Nicholas Carr, Don Tapscott, Douglas Rushkoff, Maggie Jackson, Clay Shirky, Toddy Gitlin, Manafy and Gaustschi, among others. These authors have joined the community of academics that have been arguing about this overwhelming idealization. In addition, we discuss the myths, dilemmas, and challenges that teachers from the 21st century should consider when working with the current generation of students. It is unquestionable that these students are immersed in digital technologies and constantly connected to and dependent on the Internet. They are also used to solve their problems related to communication, leisure and relationships over the Web in front of digital monitor screen. Moreover, these students often have poor critical training for the use of the technologies as well as they do not understand their potential for helping the development of their education. To change this scenario and improve the use of such technological and digital resources, we need to put in practice the result of our experience forming teachers to develop skills to better define which technologies are better to support our teaching and learning process organization. Our paper sheds some light on the ocean of ideas about the meaning of becoming a digital teacher and offers a critical analysis about which aspects should be considered when one wants to become such a teacher.

References:
BAUERLEIN, M. The Digital Divide. London: Penguin, 2011.
MANFY, M; GAUSTSCHI, H. Dancing with Digital Natives. New Jersey: Medford, 2011.
PRENSKY, M. Teaching Digital Natives: partnering for real learning. California: Corwin, 2010.
ROSEN, L. Rewired: understanding the igeneration and the way they learn. New York: Martin Press, 2010
THOMAS, M. Deconstructing Digital natives. New York: Routledge, 2011
TRILLING, B; FADEL. C. 21st Century Skills: learning for life in our times. San Francisco: John Wilet e Sons, 2009.
VEEN, W; VRAKKING, B. Homo Zappiens: educando na era digital. Porto Alegre: Artmed, 2009.

Keywords:

Teacher Formation, Digital natives, Immigrant Teachers.