Response to “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” by Marc Prensky

Responding to “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” By Marc Prensky

Summary
In the article, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” Marc Prensky (2001) pinpoints “the most fundamental of [the] causes” of the present “decline of education” as the following: “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”

Throughout, he (Prensky, 2001) uses the analogy of natives and immigrants to portray respectively “today’s students” and “the rest of us” as co-inhabitants in this new realm of the “digital age,” which exudes its own language and culture. In fact, the former actually “think and process information fundamentally differently from” the latter, and, moreover, “it is very likely that [their] brains have physically changed… as a result of how they grew up” !

Continuing upward (Prensky, 2001), this comparison is exemplified in the classroom, where a clashing of these cultures is taking place. On the one side, today’s teachers, digital immigrants, are holding to the perspective and methods of teaching which existed prior to the digital age, while, on the other side, our students, digital natives, perceive the world with  different lenses and require new methods in order to learn.

The solution represented (Prensky, 2001) includes learning “to communicate in the language and style of their students,” as well as the “content.”

Response
Although I am not sure if I would define it as the “most fundamental” cause as Marc Prensky (2001) has done, I agree with the author that this modern explosion of technology has fundamentally revolutionized the way students learn. I found the analogy fascinating because it conveys such an extend of depth of connectedness this generation has made with technology, as it has likened this group to natives, individuals who identity with a particular culture in which they are born and to which they have developed a sense of belonging and way of interaction in their world. Then, on the other hand, immigrants, who typically I perceive as those choosing to move to another place, in this analog, this movement relates to a change in time, which is a fluid transition and has been accomplished completely out of their control. They did not chose to live in this time period, nor can they go back to an early time without technology. (Of course, they are in control of how they respond to this ever-changing environment, but because its not a literal place it as well as its global reaches, trying to escape impact of technology is quite impossible. In light of this situation, a wise, veteran education’s gave me this advise: “Let your students teach you. For example, if you, the teacher, is struggling with a technological issue, ask the students for help. It’s been my experience that they usually know how to fix the problem!”  (S. Doud, personal communication, 2011).

How I believe we, as educators, should response to this shift in society is two-fold. Firstly, I agree that changes do need to be made in order to effectively connect and relate to our students. However, secondly, I also believe that although technology as a whole has opened up an unfathomable measure of opportunities for learning and is the language of students, we should guard ourselves and our students from the negative effects it also bears, including an impossible (and many times unhealthy) speed of which we have set our lives to and a lack of personal communication (which, some will agree, leads to more superficial relationships).

One ending thought, I looked at the difference between digital and analog (www.techterms.com) and discovered that analog data is authentic and more accurate than digital data. This lead me to ponder the implications that this new world being build around us is all artificial. What will the lasting ramifications on human society be?

References
Prensky, M. (2001) Digital natives, digital immigrants [online article]. Retrieved from:
http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.htm

Definition of analog and digital. Retried from: http://www.techterms.com/definition/analog