I consider myself as a Digital native student, because I prefer
to learn by using media, networks and graphics rather than the old
traditional
way.
Marcy Prensky said; today's
students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.
The digital natives Prensky describes are surrounded by digital media to such
an extent that their brain structures may be different from those of
previous generations. On the other hand, he describes Digital Immigrant teachers as a
teachers who are typically have very little appreciation for these new skills
that the Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and
practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who
themselves learned – and so choose to teach – slowly, step-by-step, one thing
at a time, individually, and above all, seriously. They don't believe their
students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music,
because they can't. They didn't practice this skill constantly for all of their
formative years. Digital Immigrants think learning can't be fun.
There are many differences between Digital Immigrant
teachers and Digital Native students. Digital Immigrant teachers learned themselves and choose to teach slowly,
step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously and
Digital Native students receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process
and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the
opposite.
The “digital immigrant accent” can be seen in such
things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or
in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program
itself will teach us to use it. There are a lot of examples of the digital
immigrant accent. They include printing out your email and bringing people
physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just
sending them the URL). Also “Did you get my email?” phone call.
According to Prensky, hat is the biggest serious problem facing
education today because our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an
outdated language, are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely
new language.
Prensky said; that Kids born into any new culture
learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the old. He
suggested reconsider both our methodology and our content to coup with the
Native students. First, our methodology. He said; teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style
of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is important,
or of good thinking skills. But it does mean going faster, less step-by step,
more in parallel, with more random access, among other things. Second, our
content. There are two kinds of content: “Legacy” content and "Future”
content.
Prensky said; as educators, we need to be
thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of
the Digital Natives. The first involves a major translation and change of
methodology; the second involves all that PLUS new content and thinking. So we
have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting materials to the
language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully. The
solution Prensky proposes is for today's teachers to learn the language of the
natives, to speed up instruction, and to provide "random access". Prensky
argues for a new way of looking at educational content as well. A category that
he calls "legacy content" consists of traditional subjects such as
reading, writing, and logical thinking; "future content" is
"digital and technological," including such subjects as
"software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology and genomics" as well
as the "ethics, politics, sociology, languages, and other things that go
with them". His preference for teaching Digital
Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious
content. After all, it's an idiom with which most of them are totally familiar.
Finally, If Digital Immigrant educators really want
to reach Digital Natives, all their students they will have to change. It's
high time for them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital
Native generation says, “Just do it!” They will succeed in the long run and their
successes will come that much sooner if their administrators support them.
