Still on MODULE 2 - Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

I’ve been doing a bit more thinking about the digital divide and have done some internet research on the topic which then led me to a whole ‘new’ area to think about - that of digital natives and digital immigrants.

So, What Are You: A Digital Native Or A Digital Immigrant?

And what exactly, is a digital native?

Well, they look like normal people. They’re the kids in our classrooms. They’re probably aged between 0 and 20. You can tell who they are by their mode of communication(s). “Got ur text” “Saw your post on Facebook.” “Hey! zat a new phone? Got any pix?” “Yeah – it’s on my blog.” “Downloaded it last night.” They were born to do YouTube, I-Tube, What’s new Tube? They aren’t quite as impressed with the new stuff as maybe two years ago. They’ve already viewed it, bought it, borrowed it or seen it on their iPhone.

I came across an eye-opening article by Marc Prensky (2001) "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". He says that the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century has ensured that today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. As a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.

Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet. Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology are digital immigrants.

The importance of the distinction is this: As digital immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past. The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it. Today’s older folk were socialised differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain. 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.So what do we as teachers need to do in order to bridge the digital divide in education? Prensky suggests that teachers must learn to communicate in the native language and style of their students and change the instructional style accordingly. This includes using more multimedia-based learning objects and also providing opportunities for multi-tasking, networking and interactivity.

Another article, "Part II: Do They Really Think Differently" looks at the socialisation affects on the brain and examines if young people today actually think differently due to their digital upbringing.

And finally, I came across this blog - http://www.committedsardine.com/blog.cfm

It's definitely worth a look!