Find out about 'Digital Immigration'.What Is it? Who cares about it? What sort of general attitudes have been based upon it?
Digital immigration, and it’s counterpart digital nativism are terms coined by Mark Prensky. It is probably best to understand these terms by understanding the latter first. Digital natives are those who are ‘native’ to the technologies of the digital revolution; those who have been born and brought up with digital technologies. As Prensky explains, Digital Natives 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" (Prensky, 2001a, p. 1).
Immigrants, on the other hand, have not grown up surrounded by such technology. Instead, they have learnt how to use such digital technologies at a later stage. Although they make competently learn to use this technology they do in a fundamentally different way to DN’s, retaining the ‘accent’ of an immigrant.
Prensky argues that the way DN’s and DI’s think, learn and process information is therefore fundamentally different. A key implication of the DI/DN divide is that of teaching; the argument that teachers are not only having to teach a generation who use different technologies but whose brains actually work differently. Prensky criticises the entire education system and claims that it is outdated and does not cater for DN’s.
One point i think worth mentioning re: Prensky’s theory is the idea that it is not a timeless one; in ten years time when DN’s are those doing the teaching, will his work still be relevant? Or will the learners have progressed yet further and be learning in different ways again? This is hard to say as envisaging future technology is near impossible but I still feel the future of the DI/DN divide is something that should be considered.
That's a very relevant criticism that I didn't think of!
ReplyDeleteSurely the next generation of digital natives will process information in yet a different way, so his theories about teaching the current generation of DN's will need to be yet again updated and edited.
And then where does it end? With technologies continually being updated where does the line between one generation of DNs start and the next begin?
Is there not some kind of "one size fits all" type of education which will cater for all DNs? Or not?
Yeah i think it will kind of carry on but in very different ways. We'll become the immigrants for new techs, but will remain natives for others.
ReplyDeleteLike you said in your blog (quoting some theorist...can't remember now but i'm sure you do!)..P's ideas seem too rigid and 'one size fits all'....i don't think that with something as fast moving as technology that these theories will ever really work/last.
re: your last point...I don't think so :) Everyone has such different grasps of different technolgies that study groups would have to be very small/specialised if this were the case. But SOME all round pointers can be taken...smaller chunks of non-linear info etc etc. What do you think?
Do smaller chunks limit developing arguments and progressing analysis/criticism? It's certainly a basic assumption behind the word limits on academic essays for instance (a PhD is 80 -100k words in Humanities for instance!)
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