Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

I felt that Marc Prensky’s article was a step in the right direction, but focused too heavily on only using technology in the classroom. Yes, he makes a valid point when he says, "today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." He explains that children have been surrounded by technology since the day they were born and can be considered "Digital Natives". Because they are able to pick up on technology so quickly it only makes sense that technology should be incorporated into the classroom. The only problem, teachers don't know how to use it thus making them "Digital Immigrants".

One thing I disagreed with Prensky on was his thoughts on Digital Immigrants retaining their accent. He mentions that it is counterproductive to print out a paper you typed in Microsoft Word so that you can edit it. I disagree. I think that mistakes often get missed when someone is editing a Word document on a screen. I also think that when you rely too much on the computer to fix your spelling and grammar mistakes, things often get missed. The point is that, technology doesn't have to replace all analog tasks.

I also think its true that Digital Natives have a hard time understanding Digital Immigrants to a certain degree. I see this the most when Digital Immigrants are using technology to teach a lesson. Majority of the time that this happens, some technological difficulty occurs that the Digital Immigrant can't fix. This leads to a) a break in the lesson and b) a Digital Native usually having to fix the problem. In my opinion once either or both of these things happen, the Digital Natives realize that they have a certain power over the Digital Immigrants. Once this happens, the lesson is lost and students will forget what they were being taught.

Prensky then mentions how we should go about teaching Digital Natives. He made some good points; however I strongly disagreed with his thoughts about teaching children through games. As a digital media major, this is a hot topic. My view on the matter is, yes we should change the way we present information to students (especially since we live in such a digital age). However, I don't think that educational games are the answer. Students don't end up learning any more or any easier through games. In fact, if the game isn't stimulating enough (which I think most educational games are), then students are bored with it and actually learn less then they would from an enthusiastic teacher. Last year I worked at an elementary school in the computer class. I was able to watch students come into the class ready to learn something exciting on the computer and then get told that they would be doing "First in Math" (an educational Math computer game). Immediately I would hear groans and I as I watched the students playing the game, they looked bored out of their minds.

Prensky mentions this in Part II of his essay. He says that majority of educational games aren't stimulating enough for Digital Natives to learn from. He gives some examples of companies that are trying to create stimulating games; however, I am still skeptical that children won't enjoying learning from them. He concludes that something needs to get done or else things will continue the way they are until all the Digital Immigrants retire and the Digital Natives take over. Unfortunately, this is what I feel will happen. We are probably only 5-10 years away from that, which means by the time the Digital Immigrants figure out what to do, the Digital Natives will have already taken over.