Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

I classify myself as a digital immigrant. Technology came along and I was taught to use it. I didn’t get email until 1997 and even then I didn’t know anything about it except that it was another way of communicating with people. Then I started to learn about the Internet, web pages, and a primitive instant message that was out at the time. Naturally, I was fascinated. But there was still so much I didn’t know. The things I didn’t know then, I classify them as being simple now.

My nieces, on the other hand, were born into technology. They eat, sleep, and wake up at the computer emailing, working on My Space, and walking around in virtual rooms they created and decorated themselves.

I totally agree with Marc Prensky’s observation “…students have changed radically,” in his 2001 article Digital natives, digital immigrants. There was a time when it was ok to teach using a lecture and textbook only, and it was effective. But, educators in public schools who continue to teach today’s generation in this manner are losing their students. Charters schools, from what I hear, are using computers more frequently in their instruction.

The words on the T-shirt, “I’m not ADD, I’m just not listening,” seem to be the sentiment of students in public schools. My experience with observing students in a classroom is that they have very short attention spans when all they hear is lecture. But, if that lecture also includes work on a computer, and the students are continually engaged in the lesson, the students enjoy learning.

Technology is the new vehicle being used to drive education. Therefore, it’s understandable that students in this generation have different cognitive learning patterns than those of previous lessons. I also agree with Prensky in saying that Digital Natives view technology as a “friend.” I tend to use technology simply as a tool to help me accomplish a task.

Technology is here to stay and it has become our way of life. Educators who continue to operate in the old manner and fail to embrace technology and incorporate it into their instruction will become obsolete.