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Chris Betcher

Ideas, Technology, Education, Travel

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The Myth of the Digital Native

By Chris Betcher - January 07, 2009

We hear a lot about the notion of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, a concept originally suggested by Marc Prensky in a paper by the same name . It makes a presumption that those born after the widespread introduction of digital technologies are somehow out of step with the world of technology, while those who were born and raised in the digital age are naturally able to function within it. Prensky contends that these younger folk - the "natives" - are born into a technology rich environment and are therefore akin to those who grow up natively speaking a given language, immersed in its use and able to converse fluently with it, while the "immigrants" are like those who come to a foreign land and need to learn to speak a whole new language. He argues that the immigrants will always have a digital "accent", and therefore their non-native heritage will always be conspicuously obvious. To be a native implies that you are not only comfortable, but know...

Class Tools

By Chris Betcher - August 25, 2025

Google released updates to their existing tools all the time, but it is not often that Google releases a brand new tool. However, they just did that with Class Tools. Built specifically for educators and schools, Class Tools provides a simple way for teachers to manage workflow, hand work to their students, and maintain some degree of control over how the students interact with that work. It's no surprise that keeping (some) students on task can be challenging, and Class Tools aims to meet this need with a Focus Mode that locks students into only those things that the teacher has asked them to work on. The teacher selects the students, or groups of students, selects the work they want done, and then pushes that to student devices for a specified period of time. Let's just talk about the devices aspect. One of the requirements for Class Tools is that both teachers and students need to be on a managed Chromebook, that is, a Chromebook enrolled into the school domain. Fo...