The sources that I selected are two articles written by Marc Prensky (2001a, 2001b), both of which are about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Digital Natives are people who have grown up with computer for most or all of their lives, while Digital Immigrants are those who grew up reading or watching TV, and have either never had experiences with computers, or had to learn them at an older age. He believes that there is actually a physical difference between the two categories, especially in how they process information, so this idea dovetails nicely with what we have been talking about with Information Processing and sensory registers.
Prensky (200a1) believed that because of the computer-filled environment that Digital Natives have grown up in, “today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (p.1). Prensky (2001b) pointed out “while cultural differences might dictate what people think about, the strategies and processes of thought . . . were assumed to be the same for everyone. However this, too, appears to be wrong (pg. 2). He insists that Digital Natives’ brains are actually physically different than Digital Immigrants, and have changed substantially. This brain difference changes the way that the students think and process, which changes the way that they learn. Prensky (2001a) lists the ways that these students like to learn:
Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work. (p. 2).
This is different from the step-by-step, slow, and serious way of learning that Digital Immigrants are used to and prefer. Digital Natives are bored by this slow and methodical way of learning, since it is nothing like the fast and active way that they surf the internet, chat with their friends, or play video games. Therefore, Digital Natives are not willing to pay attention, and Prensky (2001a) believes that content needs to be at a faster pace, more random access, etc., so that it can hold the students’ attention.
This idea of students and their difficulty paying attention to certain things brought me back to Mayer's (1996) explanation about the literal and constructivist interpretations of the Information Processing metaphor. The literal version compares humans to machines, and processing mean that “information is input, operators are applied to the input information resulting in the creation of new information, and the new information is output” (Mayer, 1996, p. 156). With machines, it does not matter what kind of input you give them; they simply apply the correct procedure until they have either come to the solution or found an error that prevents them from continuing. Therefore, Prensky’s acknowledgement that students may have difficulty paying attention when the input is not in a format they prefer shows that humans are not like machines; we will not compute whatever you put in front of us. Affect and interest play a role in whether or not students really want to put forth the effort to process new information.
Another really interesting part that Prensky brings up is how Digital Natives are very interested in the future. As Prensky (2001a) claims, ““future” content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological. But while it includes software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc. it also includes the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them(pg. 4). This reminded me of Vygotsky and his insistence on the important of culture, socio-history, and language. It sounds like the Digital Natives would be even more attuned to Vygotsky’s constructivism.
This is just a sneak peak at all that the discussion about Digital Natives vs Immigrants has in store, but I’ve always been interested in this subject and I think it ties in nicely with what we are learning about regarding Information Processing and how people think and learn.
References:
Mayer, R.E. (1996). Learners as information processors. Educational Psychologist, 31, 151-161.
Prensky, Marc. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, Marc. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, Marc. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon, 9(6), 1-9.
Thanks for sharing this. I often mention Prensky in presentations when discussing how students use technology differently and process information differently. I'm trying to remember if Prensky also talks about how significant it is for digital natives to produce information? It may not be Prensky, but I remember reading something that discussed the process of creating information in ways that might be less familiar to digital immigrants (creating a music video to post on YouTube instead of writing an essay on the same topic, for example).
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I did not see anything about that in either of these articles, so I am not sure if it was him. I have heard that before though, and we have actually been discussing it in one of my other classes. We talk about how students need to express themselves, and that creating a video, presentation, or game is actually beneficial, possibly more beneficial, than just writing a paper. The scary thing about this trend is that some teachers realize this and want to add it into their classes, but they do not realize how time consuming it is for the students and apply it to projects that might not be as meaningful as they could. It's never fun to spend hours creating a video or a game that does not really engage any deep content. Very interesting to see how education and training will develop to include this information about Digital Natives.
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks for sharing. When I was searching for things to post I didn't even think about the Digital Natives vs. Immigrants. But even in the video I post by Dr. Judy Willis on How the Brain Learns Best: Strategies to Make Learning Stick she says to help students pay attention and retain the information teachers need to personalize their instruction.
ReplyDeleteCarly I couldn't agree with you more. I hate it when I have to do a project that takes a lot of time and I didn't get as much out as I would have liked.
So my question to you both which one do you think you are a Digital Native or Immigrant? Why?
I'd say I'm a Digital Native. My family had a computer starting when I was 5, and I've had my own computer since I was 10, so I have definitely grown up around computers. I notice that it's much faster for me to learn a new program or troubleshoot within a program than it is for my parents or friends who don't use computers as much. Which do you think you are?
ReplyDeleteThanks for an engaging post, Carly. I remember first learning about Prensky a few years ago from a student in EDP 610. His immigration metaphor really spoke to me. Now that I've chewed on it awhile, I like it less as a metaphor for explaining what's going on with humans, digital devices, and learning. First, dichtomizing can be dangerous (funny aside: a famous cognitive psychologist, Ulric Neisser, once said, "There are two types of people in the world; those who dichotomize, and those who don't."). It leads to black and white thinking and ignores the many shades of gray that make the world go round. Who am I? I ask myself. I too had a computer in my house since I was a young child, but in many ways, new digital devices are not as familiar to me. Then again, my mom is an avid Facebooker. What does that make her? What of older folks who navigate the information tech highway successfully and young people who are distracted by every bleep and sound? I don't think age has too much to do with it. I'm not even convinced that it's just a matter of hours spent with digital devices. I think the answer is much more in the HOW people engage with technologies. Reading the passage from Prensky that you've pasted above makes me cringe a little for its liberal use of formalisms. We must be careful with this metaphor. That's all I'm saying. Thanks for bringing this up.
ReplyDelete