SEEU Review vol. 6 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 6, No. 2, 2010The University of Manchester, UK[http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=5317]The University of Western Australia, Civil Engineering and MiningEngineering department[http://www.civil.uwa.edu.au/students/computing/laptops]FON University, Macedonia[http://fon.edu.mk/content.aspx?cid=49&ln=sq]Another evidence of a need for this facility is an online poll made by theGeorge Lucas Educational Foundation Edutopia with 2347 persons(http://www.edutopia.org/should-laptops-replace-textbooks). As illustratedin Fig. 1, more that 1600 respondents prefer laptops to textbooks (poolquestion: Should laptops replace textbooks?). This is due to the fact that newtechnologies can help facilitate learning in ways traditional textbooks simplycannot match.No728Yes16190 1000 2000Figure 1 – Edutopia poll resultsThe world is becoming a digital world, and we need to instruct andprepare SEEU students to be digital citizens. This is a new age where almosteverything is going to be digital and students are getting most of theinformation online, this can only be done through a computer or computerlike device. This notation is due to the fact that our students have changeddrastically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational systemwas designed to educate. Today’s students – Digital Natives – represent thefirst generations to grow up with this new IT technology (Prensky, 2001).They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers,internet, e-mail, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones,and all the other service tools of the digital age. Our students today are all“native speakers” of the digital language of computers and the Internet.115