Marc Prensky's 'Digital Natives', 'Digital Immigrants'.

Marc Prensky's article on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants is very relevant to today’s society. The article reveals the differences between those who are (Digital Natives) those who have been brought up in an ever changing technological world and (Digital Immigrants) those entering this world, trying to adapt to the digital world!

The article did state that the biggest problem facing education today is that “our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. This to me makes so much sense as I experienced the most horrid high school computing teacher, who relied on us students to know the answer to such questions like “Does anyone know what you click on to get into Internet Explorer?” or “How do I check my emails on this computer?”. At first we definitely thought he was testing us, but it got worse and we came to realise we were the ones teaching him.

Not only was this “Computing” teacher so inadequate but he also had very little appreciation for these new skills that Natives have acquired and perfected through years of interaction and practice. This article was not only a laugh but very easily understandable, especially when comparing most examples to my mother whilst reading. Another problem facing those who are characterised in the ‘Digital Immigrant’ world is that “learning new stuff” may be hard, but “learning new ways to do the old stuff” is even more difficult. I think as an immigrant you only want to learn it once and practise it one hundred times, understand it then not have to ever change what you just learnt. But in this digital world, changes happen so often I wonder if there is ever any point in studying so hard to remember things off by heart. Perhaps it is just better to half learn them then before you know it, you’ll be learning the new ways?

I thoroughly enjoyed this article, and could go on writing about nearly every line written. But don’t worry. I won’t.