Matt the Digital Native

I am a digital native. I text, play video games, watch TV, and download music just about every day. I have probably spent "over 10,000 hours playing video games...or "20,000 hours watching TV"(Prensky, Do They Really Think Differently? Pg.1) by the time I graduated college. Also, I use the internet every day to view newspaper articles, do research, view fun web sites, and stay current on the latest technology.
My experience with technology as a student in high school was fairly limited to VHS videos, power point presentations, DVD players, CD players and over head projectors. The internet was almost never used in the classroom, except for when our class would go to the computer lab to do research on a topic. Cell phones were just becoming a necessity for kids and we would never use them in class because they would have been taken by our teachers.
College was fairly similar to high school, especially the use of over head projectors, watching videos using DVD players and VHS players and power point presentations in classrooms and lecture halls. But, it was the first time I used the internet to submit class assignments, view grades, email professors and check updated class information. Also, we had full classes online and tests or quizzes as well. This was very cool to me and enabled me to stay current and have no excuses for not knowing what was going on. Using the most current technology helped me focus and be a better student because I was very comfortable in front of a computer. Also, I would get anxiety before tests in class and this allowed me to avoid that with nearly one class a trimester.
The use of technology in the classroom to teach students who are all digital natives is a great idea because my job as a teacher is to engage my students and reach them anyway I can. Using computers, the internet, cell phones, blogs etc. seems very feasibly for me as a future teacher in the 21st Century. Video games seem like a great idea and as Prensky puts it, they are " an idiom with which most of them are totally familiar."(Prensky. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Pg.4) I love video games and finding ones which are fun and can serve an educational purpose would be great. I will be a social studies teacher, so I hope there are current games available which I can incorporate with topics I will teach. Using the internet and cellphones to conduct research is a great way to use the tools kids know and avoids kids from wanting to "power down"(Prensky. Engage Me or Enrage Me. Pg. 64) as one kid put it.
It will be fun for me to use my creativity and technology to have a classroom conducive to learning for the teenager of the 21st Century.