*Marc Prensky said in the article Digital Natives, Digital Immagrants that "They [digital immagrants] prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite."
*James Gee said in his article Learning Theory, Video Games, and Popular Culture that "...humans think and understand best when they can imagine (simulate) an experience in such a way that the simulation prepairs them for actions they need and want to take in order to accomplish their goals. (Clark 1997;Barsalou, 1999b; Glenburg and Robertson, 1999)"
The traditional activity that seems to come up is this typical scenario: Science teacher lectures about topic, then passes out lab and goes over steps of the lab, students follow steps to finish the lab.
Since digital natives are more used to graphical representations, it would seem fitting to give them the instructions to the lab using pictures and video. I would like to see the students coming up with the steps to the lab themselves by only looking at the picture prompts. By looking at the pictures and thinking about the lab steps beforehand, the students are actually simulating the lab before they even start. This would increase their performance during the lab setting and even add to the overall depth and elaboration. Just mindlessly following the steps doesn't lead to much elaboration or depth of processing.
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