Laura Turner's concerns about teacher's lack of technological skills may soon become a thing of the past. Mary Alice Anderson has seen a growing trend of Digital Natives beginning to filter into the school system as teachers. The irony is that many of these new teachers "are clueless about effectively integrating or infusing technology into the curriculum, despite having technological skill sets that exceed those of many experienced teachers".³²

Digital Native teacher's experience with technology helps them with their ability to adapt when "learning the instructional management software … for grades, attendance and online lesson plans"³³ or learning the new email system or creating the class Web page, according to Turner. What Digital Native teachers lack is what every new professional lacks, that is the experience base from which to draw when developing new curriculum for the classroom.

For Turner Digital Native teacher's technological expertise can result in them becoming "role models for the experience teachers"³⁴ with whom they work. Too often experienced classroom teachers comfort level is "primarily limited to the classroom and textbook".³⁵ Turner feels that "new teachers with fresh ideas can move a department or teaching team forward"³⁶ if career teachers are willing to put aside their feelings of technological incompetence and work in partnership with these new teachers.

One of the ways for this to happen, according to Anderson, is for school media specialists to create relationships with these new teachers and act as a mediator with the existing staff. In doing so, they will be able to mentor these new teachers and help them to develop positive working relationships with the rest of the staff so that their natural passion and enthusiasm for technology can be harnessed to create relationships with career teachers that are trusting and respectful. In this way Digital Native teachers will "become tomorrow's collaborators and constructivist learning teachers".³⁷

Read Helen C. Barrett's
ideas on how to use
emerging digital tools.


Electronic Portfolios as
Digital Stories of
Deep Learning