Sunday, June 5, 2011

'Digital Native, Digital Immigrant' Quotes Blog


In the article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants author Marc Prensky discusses the education gap between what he calls the digital native generation to the digital immigration generation.  For people who do not what this means it’s simple. The digital natives are the kids who were born into the digital world. They know everything from computers and the Internet all the way to the latest gadgets. They know exactly what is going on in the world in an instant from Facebook to Twitter. However, the flip side of this generation is the digital immigrants generation. They are the people who grew up in a ‘simpler’ time. They read books, instead of finding the answer on the Internet; they take their time and enjoy doing things the ‘long’ or ‘hard’ way. These two very different groups coincide with each other and now more then ever are butting heads over the future.

The article begins with the education problem that is happening in the United States. Kids today are not learning at the level they should be and more and more kids are dropping out of school or just not attending. “This is not just a joke. It’s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.” (Page 2, paragraph 3) With all the teachers stuck in their old ways, I think it causes these types of problems. Teachers need to accept the fact that times are changing, so are our kids and the access they have available to them.

However, “should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new?” (Page 3, paragraph 5) I honestly think that because our students are the future of everything, it only makes sense for the Digital Immigrants to move forwards and learn these new teaching methods. “We need to invent Digital Native methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us.” (Page 6, paragraph 1) By teachers figuring out new ways to teach their students, it will open up everything. Students will be more likely to want to learn things, if it makes more sense to them.

4 comments:

  1. I also wrote about teachers being stuck in the traditional learning mold and how Prensky seem to say that they are unwilling to move forward. I believe it is great to have both traditional and new ways of learning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great points. I agree that teachers who are digital immigrants need to adapt. I have had two professors at RIC who only assigned response papers to texts and research papers from books-no digital media. That was tough! I think there is a belief from digital immigrants that they are academically superior to digital natives. In my opinion, the two are just different forms of teaching that can be combined.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kids today are spendign all of their time inside on computers and video games instead of playing outside and using their imagination. I think this is a big problem!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree with you when u talked about how the teachers need to accept that the times are changing. They also should realize that technology can also be a learning tool and not just all about video games.

    ReplyDelete