Thoughts on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Thoughts on Marc Prensky's article "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants":

What have you done recently to showcase your accent?

I often email or call people when a digital native would naturally text. Later I realize texting would have been quicker, more effective, and more flexible (they know right away they have a message and can get to it at their convenience).

I avoid using my husband's IPad because I don't really "get it" and don't want to invest the time in making it natural and familiar because I can't yet afford one of my own.

How can we help DI and DN connect in the classroom and avoid...

This article was GREAT at summarizing some of the reasons kids are bored at school. I had to laugh at the author junking "learning objectives" and criticizing step-by-step, one-at-a-time instruction, because in my experience, administrators and teachers want to prominently feature these, and they can be total turnoffs to students, who feel patronized and pushed in one direction. I basically completely agree with the author's assessment of what works and what doesn't to engage students, except that he says they like fast explanations, and (speaking as someone who tends to talk too fast) I think that varies a lot depending on the student.

The problem is that by having the classroom involve lots of digital-native-style learning, we also open it up to competition from things that are frankly more fun. College students or professionals are paying or being paid for learning, so they have some motivation to make their time count, but K-12 students who have an implicit choice between non-educational games and educational games are often going to pick the non-educational games. We have to design built-in accountability to steer them toward the (slightly?) less appealing choice. I can't compete with all of YouTube!! Nevertheless, since that is kind of happening anyway (bathroom trips to get on phones, etc.), it's better to at least close the entertainment gap some.

This article was written in 2001. Are Prensky's concerns still valid? Why or why not?

Heck yeah, they're valid. But I am not so sure about this binary of natives/immigrants. For instance, I'm a native on calculators, and close to a native on, say, email or document editing, but an immigrant on cell phone apps. I already see older students (or younger teachers) dealing awkwardly with some newer technology. "Immigrants" can model for "natives" how to keep learning the things that THEY aren't natives on, either.