Students of all ages have access to more technology than they ever have before.  It allows students to communicate more with their families, friends, and schools.  Students have so much information at their fingertips.  However, having all this access to technology doesn’t mean that they know how to use it effectively all of the time.  In the article, “Teaching ‘Digital Native’ College Students Who Understand TikTok — But Not Microsoft Excel”, the author discusses how college students have grown up with technology.  Students use technology all of the time, but even still, not everyone knows how to use it successfully to help them in their education.  

This is an important idea for educators to remember when teaching in the classroom.  Students of all ages are growing up with more technology than ever, but not everyone will know how to use different programs just because they grew up with technology.  It is important to use technology in the classroom to help with our students’ learning, but we have to teach them how to use technology just like we would any other subject.  We can not expect students to know everything about technology just because they have grown up with it all around them.  

In the article, it discusses how some college students struggle when using technology because it is new to them.  As teachers, we can prepare students better for such situations by getting them used to using technology within the classroom at earlier ages.  No one class or one teacher will be able to teach a student everything they need to know about technology because of how many different tools there are out there, but we can teach students how to approach new technology within education.  We can expose students to a variety of resources so that they have more options to use in the future.  Our students may be growing up with technology, but it is a tool that we will need to teach them in order for it to be used effectively in our classrooms.