Digital natives: 5 golden rules to educate your children
Do you remember a viral video in which a child of about two years old tried to make the same movement of fingers on a television as one does on a tablet? It is a fact that the environment in which our children develop has changed surprisingly in the last fifty years and parents, although we are not digital natives like them, we must accompany them and participate in this change.
Parental involvement in technological change
The problem of the language of digital natives is that it supposes for us as parents and digital immigrants a greater effort on our part.
1. We need is to lose the fear of new technologies. Internet is just a channel, not a message, so the Internet is not good in bad in itself, it is as good or bad as paper, capable of containing the best resources for children and also the greatest atrocities. A good way to lose these fears of the unknown is to try to show our digital native children some of these resources and check their effectiveness. In the Primary stage, surprising results will be discovered.
2. Worry about obtaining specific training in the subject. Prensky emphasizes the need for parents to have a proactive attitude towards the use of new technologies. Because the usual thing is to avoid any information on the question that can come to us on the basis that this does not go with us, we are not familiar and it is alien to us. This circumstance, very frequent, supposes a neglect of functions in our task of educating, since our children will demand from us that we understand the language in which they express themselves and in which they are required to express themselves.
3. Interested in finding suitable content to support our children in the different aspects of their training. Luckily, searching is one of the capabilities of digital natives that immigrants have learned before. If we are able to navigate to find the perfect apartment for holidays, look at the billboard or compare the features of a car, it will not be difficult for us to access the numerous websites that offer learning resources in various areas. There is abundant free material available.
4. The use of the Internet in minors requires a greater presence of parents. In the previous generation, a child who leafed through a history book with more or less interest had no risk of receiving inappropriate material in parallel, such as an adult magazine.
However, if we leave our primary school only with a video that explains the food pyramid with fun drawings, the rich offer of Youtubo will take it from there to other contents, some of them suitable for him but not formative, and others, simply inadequate. It forces us to a greater vigilance even in children of these ages who will not have the adolescent's tendency to search for contents that are decidedly forbidden.
Five golden rules to educate your digital native children
1. Interested: we have to avoid the apathy that ignorance can generate us. You have to ask our children what technologies they use and try to understand how they work.
2. Learn: Our commitment includes asking experts in pedagogy, our children's tutors and other parents, for the most appropriate ages for each type of content. We have to know the rhythm that they follow in school and that of other classmates.
3. Actively search for suitable resources: get informed in specialized magazines in education, in blogs, through the advice that the school provides, in the press and in the search engines.
4. Be present to guide: Children between 6 and 12 years old have a healthy curiosity that will help them to discover new materials, but we must be available to guide their selections and prevent them from being inadequate.
5. Be part of your world: we have to learn, even with an accent, the digital language because otherwise we will be excluded from a fundamental part of the world of our children. This can have serious consequences for the whole family.
It may interest you:
- Digital natives: a different generation of children
- Competences that digital natives no longer develop
- New technologies in the school, its benefits
- Computers in class do not improve student grades
