Digital Natives and the Net Gen/21st century learner

I truely feel enlightened after reading the posted articles for this week.  I feel that I've gained great insight into today's students.  It makes sense that children today (digital natives) would be learning differently due to the influence of technology in their lives.  As one of the articles stated, we are influence by our environment.  I grew up in a much different environment, I am very much so a digital immigrant, and it concerned me that I may not be as effective as I'd like to be in teaching digital natives.  However, as I read on, and as I reflected on my teacher preparatory classes, I now feel empowered.  I do feel learning should be fun and authentic, and if technology can further enhance my lessons, then that is great.  I was suprised to read that the Net Gen students are very social on a face to face level, so much so that they rank the teacher's presence, knowledge and passion for the subject matter very high, and that technology should only be used to effectively relay the teacher's knowledge and to customize the learning experience for the students, not just used for the sake of using technology.  A misconception I had was that because students converse so much with texting, myspace etc, that they would lack the desire or the skills to have social face to face interaction.  That is not the understanding I have gained from the Net Gen readings.  The concepts of allowing students to learn in a way most productive tor them is a good concept, of course within reason.  Several of my classes have discussed this point. I feel this plays into Howard Gardner's theory on multiple intelligences.  My professors have talked about stations, and cooperative group work etc.  I love that technology can be used to help the introvert, through messaging boards.  I like the cooperative group work approach, which plays into the  social learning preferences of this group.   These articles talked a lot about allowing learning preferences, students do not like to be talked at.  This too makes sense, the approach I learned to teaching science is through inquiry investigations, where after great deal of behind the scenes preparation on behalf of the teacher, students are guided to learn and make discoveries on their own.  I absolutly feel that more learning is taking place and retention is far greater, boredome is lessened and therefore students stay engaged.  Furthermore this approach is in a social group setting.  A great teacher should also strive to make learning meaningful and authentic to the learner, here again, this would decrease boredom and therefore increase the amount of time students are engaged.  One article said we should respect and listen to kids opinion on how they want to learn.  If our goal is for our students to learn, then we should as educators assess our methods as well, and not just student peformance, so by listening to their opinion on how they want to learn and then reflecting on what they did learn and what part of the learning process was most effective, seems to be a win win situation.  I believe these concepts will help to develop independent learners and technology in the classroom can further enhance discovery and the learning process.