A thought-provoking issue in education is the one in connection to Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. With our classmates we have read an article by Marc Prensky (2001) and today we want to share part of our discussions about and reflections in relation to it.
The main idea that the author presents in the article is that Digital Natives -those who have grown up with digital technologies- constitute a new generation of students who “think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (2001: 1). As a consequence, teachers, most of whom are considered Digital Immigrants, (since they were not born into the digital world but have adapted many aspects of new technology), speak a language totally different from that of their students, establishing a conflicting “discontinuity”, in Prensky’s words.
Along the article, we found certain statements we don’t entirely agree with; for example, when the author expresses: “The single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (2001:2), in our opinion there are other issues of great importance that teachers and schools have to face day by day (for instance, building problems, racism, bullying, physical and psychological violence, etc.). Actually, with the digital era, students get involved with declassified information that could be inappropriate for their age, or the content is just not ‘funny’ as they think. In that case, we as future teachers have to be prepared to face these kinds of difficult situations and, we think, it could be less demanding if we teach them to speak the new language so as to facilitate the communication.
Moreover, we reflected about the following statement: "A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is 'this approach is a great for facts, but it wouldn't work for my subject.' Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination" (2001: 6). We agree with it to a certain extent, since we consider that probably one of the reasons why teachers don’t try new ways of teaching is the lack of imagination. However, there are other reasons that are more “common” or frequent, and here is where we agree to Prensky’s idea when he says: "It's just 'dumb' (and lazy) of educators- not to mention ineffective- to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach, and that the Digital Natives 'language' is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea" (2001: 6) since we think one of the main reasons for teaching in the old way is the lack of willingness from the part of the teachers and their fear of wasting time in designing and implementing new ideas in their classrooms.
Hope these reflections can be of interest and we strongly recommend reading the article, since it shows a current problematic issue as regards education and of great importance in EFL teaching contexts.
Along the article, we found certain statements we don’t entirely agree with; for example, when the author expresses: “The single 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” (2001:2), in our opinion there are other issues of great importance that teachers and schools have to face day by day (for instance, building problems, racism, bullying, physical and psychological violence, etc.). Actually, with the digital era, students get involved with declassified information that could be inappropriate for their age, or the content is just not ‘funny’ as they think. In that case, we as future teachers have to be prepared to face these kinds of difficult situations and, we think, it could be less demanding if we teach them to speak the new language so as to facilitate the communication.
Moreover, we reflected about the following statement: "A frequent objection I hear from Digital Immigrant educators is 'this approach is a great for facts, but it wouldn't work for my subject.' Nonsense. This is just rationalization and lack of imagination" (2001: 6). We agree with it to a certain extent, since we consider that probably one of the reasons why teachers don’t try new ways of teaching is the lack of imagination. However, there are other reasons that are more “common” or frequent, and here is where we agree to Prensky’s idea when he says: "It's just 'dumb' (and lazy) of educators- not to mention ineffective- to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach, and that the Digital Natives 'language' is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea" (2001: 6) since we think one of the main reasons for teaching in the old way is the lack of willingness from the part of the teachers and their fear of wasting time in designing and implementing new ideas in their classrooms.
Hope these reflections can be of interest and we strongly recommend reading the article, since it shows a current problematic issue as regards education and of great importance in EFL teaching contexts.
Resource: Prensky, M. (n.d.). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Retrieved July, 2016, from https://edorigami.wikispaces.com/file/view/PRENSKY%20-%20DIGITAL%20NATIVES%20AND%20IMMIGRANTS%201.PDF
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ReplyDeleteAmazing post! While reaading, we started thinking on how students exchange inappropriate content through the internet with their cellphones, and how this content is sometimes generated by them, for example when they get into a fight at school or when they bully another students. This is really worrying so teachers should also try to keep their eyes open to avoid situations like these.
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https://21stcenturymaterialdesigning.blogspot.com.ar/)