Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

This piece was one of the easier reads we've had in class. Marc Prensky does a great job in writing this piece. His use of language makes this piece enjoyable and at the same time educational. It's interesting how he uses "native" and "immigrant" to depict the actuality of differences between the older crowd and the younger, technogically advanced crowd. There was one statement that stood out to me and I'm not quite sure how to respond to it but when he writes "... Digital Immigrants can, and should laugh at ourselves and "our accent"." I don't know if maybe I'm going to far with my thinking...Why would you want to laugh at yourself simply because you don't understand something?? That's the last thing I'd do.

Being that I am a prospective teacher this piece was right up my alley. I have to to agree with the statment that Prensky makes: "Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach". I feel like in many of the school systems, the curriculum or actually the way the curriculum is taught does not match up with the way students learn anymore. When I was in elementary school, we did not have I-pods, cell phones, or the internet; so during those times it was ok, i guess, to lecture to us, have some discussion and then have us regurgitate "everything" we learned or memorized back on a hand-out. However, nowadays with the techonology growing and as Prensky puts it "there is absolutely no going back". There is actually no way of going back...How could you anyway?

Prensky asks a very improtant question in this piece: "Should the D.N students learn the old ways, or should their D.I educators learn the new?" Well my answer to this is have them both learn each other's way. I feel like for the Natives they need to learn the basics without the use of technology and the Immigrants of course would only benefit from becoming friendly with the evergrowing technology. For example, in regards to math, this piece talked about using calculators; which is considered to be technological. Well if the Natives learned computation on their own without the use of calculators, their understanding of the concepts in many of the math problems would be easier for them to understand. Using a calculator for every little math problem shows laziness. Always relying on a calculator doesn't show a complete understanding of a subject matter.

On the other side of this, educators, especially those of an older generation need to come to terms that technology is here to stay and if anything is only getting more complex and an integral part of many of their students' lives. Instead of being afraid or pushing it away, technology should be embraced and intergrated into lessons as well as curriculums. Now, this does not mean technology should be in every single minute of the school day but it should defintely be weaved throughout the day. Nor does this mean your school district should have to buy thousands or maybe even millions of dollars worth of equipment. Technology in the classroom can mean watching a clip on a tv screen or on the internet or even using a power point presentation instead of writing on the chalkboard. Even the simplest forms of techonlogy can make a difference in how well the student reacts to the curriculum; not to mention using techonolgy also gets to alot more learners (e.g visual).

Having had experience in both traditional methods (pre-digital) of teaching as well as unconventional (digital) teaching. I have to say that more kids are interested and more apt to participate when technology is involved.

All in all, education has to keep the students' we are teaching as the focal point. We, as educators have to change with technology. However, we cannot change so much so that we forget how we were taught and the fundamentals and importance of these ways. We have to keep in touch with our technology-savvy students without losing touch on the more traditional ways of teaching; because both are equally very important in educating our future.