Marc Prensky's article: "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" (2001) presents a clear outline of the characteristics of each of these classifications.
I am without a doubt a Digital Immigrant. His article describes the difficulties that "Immigrants" have in adjusting their "norms" to meet the ever-changing needs of the Natives. As educators, it is our responsibility to meet the needs of our students in the classroom (in terms of the curriculum that we teach), so why is it not our responsibility to meet their needs in ways they can relate to? Prensky states: "Our students have."
changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system
was designed to teachSo my question, why are so many unwilling to change the system? Is it simply because it would require: time, money, extra-effort, and perhaps continuing education on the part of the educators? Or, could it be a deeper issue...FEAR?
It is true that there is still a great number of "Digital Immigrants" teaching our "Digital Natives". It hasn't occured where the "immigrant" population has caught up in numbers to the "native" population to where natives are teaching natives. There are many senior, experienced teachers who are in the classroom who also happen to be "Digital Immigrants".
So, it is my feeling that the "immigrants" need to adapt to the new environment. I mean, check out the definition of immigrant itself! "A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another???
This leads me to believe that "Digital Immigration" means the the "Digital" part is here to stay. I do realize that people in general for the most part can be afraid of change...but as educators, we should embrace differences and change. So, guess what, this is going to require W-O-R-K on our part.
In Prensky's article, he says that Immigrants never truly lose their "accent". (p. 2) For example, a Digital "accent" would be printing emails to read them, having face-to-face meeting instead of using Skype .
There is nothing wrong with this, the problems occurs when the immigrants refuse to incorporate, or transition into the use of technology in their daily lives. "The single biggest problem facingour Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated
education today is that
language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks
an entirely new language." (Prensky, p. 2)I have to admit, when I began teaching my first online course with VHS I had never taken an online course, let alone teacher one. This was a scarey
I feel that I am passing the status of Digital Immigrant...and am becoming a "Permanent Resident"!
Bernadette, wonderful thoughts. I love the idea of digital immigrants and digital natives.
ReplyDeleteI wonder at what point will the digital natives become the teachers and teachers of teachers. Professional development and teacher education is still run by digital immigrants (like us!). When will the digital natives migrate into higher education? When will they become the administrators and professors who teach learning as digital natives?
We are not servicing our population to the best of their abilities. As digital natives, their learning curve is not as steep as ours in acquiring, processing, and creating digital information. We need to continue to push the digital agenda and allow students and teachers to continue creating the digital learning environments that best suit the digital native learner.
Yours,
Aaron
Aaron,
ReplyDeleteI was trying to get to that point in my post, not sure I did as good a job as you. I was trying to say the same thing. Right now, we (the educators and administrators) are still the immigrant population. I hope I am in this world of education in some capacity to see the time where the natives have become the educators and the administrators....it will be interesting.