Digital native

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In an article in 2001, Marc Prensky referred to a cultural difference relating to whether a person grew up with or without fairly accessible electronic media. Those who did he referred to as digital natives (sometimes they are also called "Digiborigines") while the rest who function within an ITC world are digital immigrants.

Digital natives are often loosely grouped as people who were born after 1980 with ubiquitous access to digital media. First computers, then the Internet, as well as other progressively more advanced technologies, such as hundreds of channels of television, cell phones, game consoles and the like. These people have spent more time watching television and playing games than reading books before adulthood.

Many major companies have adopted the vernacular of "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants." Apple Computer, Inc., with a history of pushing its technologies into the education sector, has adopted much of this philosophy as the basis for its marketing to the K-12 community. (Searching for "digital native" within the Apple web site reveals many examples.) As a result of the commercial legitimization of this philosophy, many schools in the US and internationally have adopted "one-to-one" learning programs to enhance the learning process for digital natives.

The challenge educators face today is the need to help digital "immigrant" teachers cope with the very different approach to learning that is taken by their students. In the past, professional development to help teachers better understand these students has been undertaken by education leaders (principals, school districts, etc.). With the right training, teachers can begin to understand the unique perspective of the digital native learner. However, as Prensky notes, "immigrants" always retain their accents, keeping a foot in the old regardless of the quantity or quality of training they receive.

Counterpoint Martin Owen, Director of Learning, Futurelab in a viewpoint article The myth of the digital native, claims that Presnky's 'slogan' does not stand up to inspection. He offers 'statistics' that are inconsistent with Prensky's claim.

The problem with both Presnky's assertion and Owen's counter claim is they both lack substantive research as backing for their viewpoints.

Viewpoint It may help to read Presnky's second article first. In the second article he provides the argued basis for the claims he makes in his first article.

Prensky's Digital Native - Digital Immigrant descriptions are evocative. However, life in reality is seldom as black and white. It could be argued that there are sub-classes of Digital Immigrants. Many older generation people have lived and thought like computers for over forty years. Should we consider such a sub-class to be Digital Hippies perhaps?