"Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants"

For the last four years, I’ve started out my Media Literacy course by giving my learners what I like to call a Digital Literacy Questionnaire. The questionnaire is designed to gauge just how computer savvy 21st century learners really are. I typically ask 20 questions. Some of the questions are really easy and some require a little research. All of the questions deal with computers, hardware, software and the Internet.

I point the students to wikipedia for answers to the tough questions. Wikipedia is a web-based encyclopedia that is authored and maintained by volunteers from across the globe. As of September 9, 2007, the English version of Wikipedia contained over 2 million articles.

I figured that those students, who had computers at home, would have no trouble answering most of the questions I drew up. But over the last four years my figuring has not been altogether accurate.

Marc Prensky, author of Digital Game Based Learning and Founder and CEO of Games2Train coined the terms Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Digital Natives being that generation of learners who were born into a world of cell phones, computers, the Internet, text messaging and remote controls, and Digital Immigrants generally being the 45 and older crowd - phone booths, black and white television sets, 8 track tapes, 45 records and LPs.

Prensky goes on to state that "Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language."

Prensky is absolutely correct. Digital Immigrant educators must find a happy medium between the old school and the new school in order to be highly effective in the classroom. Digital Immigrant educators must lead their learners like Sherpas through the Himalayas. We must blaze and clear a new and engaging trail using the smart educational tools that are so much a part of the Digital Natives' everyday life - cell phones, digital cameras, computers, MP3 players and video cameras. Why? Because digital natives, despite being born into a world of remote controls, cell phones MP3 players, digital cameras and personal computers, generally lack the wisdom to use, or even understand these amazing productivity tools wisely, both in school and out of school.

When you think about it, computers today are like Formula I race cars. They're expensive, they're lightning-fast and they can perform some really amazing functions. Yet despite all of their tremendous horsepower, the best that many of today’s Digital Natives can do with these lean, mean, racing machines is turn on the engine and fool with the turn signals. Very few digital natives even take their Mclaren-Mercedes (computers) out of the pit area.

This blog is intended to feature a few of the ways that we as educators can engage our learners by teaching digitally. I certainly don't have all of the answers, but together, we can at least move our learners from out of the pit area and into grid position.

Please use this space to express your thoughts and opinions on how to best teach Digital Natives in the 21st century.














Images:
Lewis Hamilton, McLaren-Mercedes, Barcelona, 2007
Lewis Hamilton


H. Songhai
9/30/07