Article Summary and Reaction: “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky
Summary
The author starts out commenting on how amazed he is with all the debates concerning the decline of Education in the
US. He points out that the most fundamental cause is how our students have changed radically. Furthermore, Prensky states, “Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” He describes today’s student as the first generation to grow up with new technology. It is astonishing to see the few hours a college graduate will dedicate to reading as opposed to the time he dedicates to playing video games and watching TV. To make matter worse, the result of this ubiquitous environment is that today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. Thinking patterns have changed. He prefers to call these students as Digital Natives.Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet. The rest of us, if we were not born into the Digital World and adopted many aspects of the new technology, are considered as Digital Immigrants. Even though we have learned to adapt some better than other, we are still going to retain our accent and keep to some degree our foot in the past. Prensky present examples on how we still speak an outdated language by still confirming if someone has received by making a phone call. Our basic problem in the Educational system is that Digital Immigrant instructors use an outdated language to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Also, Digital Native receives information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. Digital Immigrants have very little appreciation for these skills. Digital Immigrants teachers assume that learners are the same as they always been and the same old methods will work. It is very unlikely that Digital Native students will learn the old ways. They can not go backwards; their brains may already be different. Teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. As educators we need to be thinking about how to teach both legacy and future content in the language of the Digital Natives. It is not easy to learn new stuff or learning new ways to do old stuff. The author prefers to invent computer games for teaching. He mentions on how these computer games have been effective and gives example such as Monkey Wrench. Furthermore he gives suggestions and ideas for new computer games for math and geography. Also he states the need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels using our student to guide us. Prensky has a heard of frequent objection that the Digital approach would not work for certain educators because their subject or course tends to be more subjective than objective. Some educators presume that Digital games are only good for facts. Educators who believe the prior assumption have a lack of imagination. In his lectures Prensky includes thought experiments gives examples how he uses it in subjects such as Classical philosophy and The Holocaust. At the end, the author of this article advices Digital Immigrants educators if they really want to reach Digital Natives they will have to change. It’s high time for the Digital Immigrants to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!” Also, Prensky urges school administrators to support the educators who want a change.
Reaction
I am going to b sincere. It is just simply overwhelming how fast everything is moving in this Digital era. We have to face it; our students have changed a lot in a very short time. How can they be ready for the workforce if teachers keep living in the Stone Age? There still many teachers out there who are not willing to change. We have to move out of the comfort zone, so students can stop seeing us as pre-historic beings that arrived from another era to make their life boring. But we need the Educational system to support those teachers who are willing to change, if we want these transformations to occur. Teachers need support and training. English as Second Language teachers have the advantage that we are used to teaching a language that only a few understand in the classroom We do not have homogeneous groups but rather heterogeneous groups, In the same classroom we can find students who are completely bilingual interacting with students who barely utter a word in English. ESL teachers are used to dealing and resolving problems with communication. I do not mean to be cynical but “Isn’t it nice to know that my colleagues will get a glimpse of the daily challenges a teacher deals with in an ESL classroom thanks to the Digital Native. According to Jones (2007), “Digital natives – sometimes called “millennials” will make up the majority of your student body and are going to be making up a big portion of the workforce over the next 10 years. They’re a bigger portion of the population than even the baby boomers.” Teacher will have to stop talking in outdated language and use methods that will help us communicate more effectively. It will not be very for the Digital Native Teacher to change his way for the sake of his students. Is it easy for an old dog to learn new tricks? Hey, but who said life was easy? Let our own students guide us? Why don’t we take a time out with ask them ask them to tell us how to use the MP3 player in our cellular phone more effectively instead of using the manual. Today students discover and learn by trial and error how to work their mp3 player, gameboys, x -boxes, phones, and laptops. They just click buttons and move through menus. They hardly ever read a manual or go through online or tutorial sessions. (Smith Nash , 2006). This is very true and my son can prove it. His reading teacher can never get my son who is in third grade to read a book for more than fifteen minutes, but he would spend the whole class hour in front of the teacher’s computer with reading programs. I’m glad she did because Erick, my nine year old son, was sent less to the principal office during this period. Technology can modify a student’s poor behavior. If the Digital Immigrant teachers can talk to their Digital Native student even with an accent we are broadening the roads or may I say freeways of communication. We have to make the classroom more interesting and in tune with today’s technological advances. The high dropout rate has to dwindle and our students have to come up to better and bigger job opportunities.
References:
Jones, K, (March 2007). On Education 2.0. EduConnection Retrieved from http://www.sun.com/emrkt/educonnection/newsletter/0307kimsnotebook.html
Smith Nash, S. (October, 2006). Inside eLearning: Digital Natives and eLearning Retrieved from
http: // community.elearners.com/blogs/inside_elearning/archive/2006/10/_1C20_Digital…
