Why+is+this+information+important+for+teachers?

 When it comes to the topic of social networking sites, it seems quite obvious that today's teachers are //not// digital natives, in the same sense that their students are. Today's teachers have not been born into a home with a computer; they probably learned to use one later in life. Most teachers own cell phones, but it is probable that they do not spend nearly as much time texting friends as their students would. Finally, many teachers have a profile on some sort of social networking site, but do not use it to the same extent that their students do, as "the average teenager spends 31 hours per week online" (crunchgear.com). It would be correct to assume that much of this online time is probably spent on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. Therefore, if a teacher's students fit the definition of "digital natives", then they, consequently, learn information in a much different way than this teacher is prepared to teach them. Today, teachers need to become educated on the lives and learning behaviours of digital natives, so that they can properly educate them, in turn.

Since digital natives are used to the stimulating, virtual world of videos and graphics, the classic classroom lecture including just a white board's notes will likely not be engaging enough to the attention of today's students. Teachers will feel the need to branch out and learn more about technology, if only to keep their classes interesting and current enough for their students.

Not only will teachers need to expand their teaching abilities, though, they will also have to adapt to supervising the new ways that digital natives are behaving. The created society that exists within social networking sites will often cross the border into real life. Because a student's life is so exposed with photographs, personal statuses, and relationship updates, other students have instant access to the gossip and happenings in their fellow students' lives. In this way, social networking sites provide a whole other outlet for students to attack one another for expressing themselves, or seek revenge on someone in the cruelest of ways. One website states that: "As a form of bullying, cyber bullying retains all three of these characteristics of traditional bullying, but with some significant twists. First, the Internet and other digital media **allow for the bully to remain anonymous** to his or her victim, which, among other things, establishes an imbalance of power, with substantial power given to the perpetrator. In addition, though studies have shown that users have lauded this trait of the Internet, citing the ability to remain anonymous as enabling them to truly express themselves" (digitalnative.org). Bullying on social networking sites makes it hard to pinpoint a perpetrator, but the effects of bullying on these sites can be just as traumatic, and possibly even more criminal, with the free usage of a person's photographs and the option to save and then display a private conversation.

For these reasons and more, teachers need to be aware of the sites that their students, as digital natives, are connected to, and they must try to monitor them as much as possible, if a problem happens to arise.