Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants
Occasionally I come across people who wonder “How kids can do that?” They see them working five windows of MSN, texting on the mobile phone, and homework at the same time. I know people wonder because I look at my own daughter in amazement. “How does she do that?”
Marc Prensky wrote an article in 2001 titled, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. I’ve pulled out some excerpts that I think will help those of us digitally challenged along the way.
Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.
…today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.
… the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet.
So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us not born in the digital world … [are called] Digital Immigrants.
Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text. They prefere random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to “serious” work.
