The Digital Native Debate

The Digital Native v Digital Immigrant debate created when Prensky first coined the phrases has certainly ignited serious discussion over the years and perhaps this was his intention. That so many were enamored by his proposal without much evidence to the fact was brought up in our discussions. Such buzzwords are wont to do, with people actively searching for words to define whole groups or even generations of people such as Generation X, the Baby Boomers and so on. In fact, my first thought upon reading it was a scene from The Simpsons where TV executives are just using a series of buzzwords to make their point, rather than saying anything of substance.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

That this was my initial reaction to Prenksy's thoughts shows I wasn't overly enamoured with his preachings. And it did seem like preaching at times

"school often feels pretty much as if we've brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible foreigners to lecture them."

(Prensky: 2001: 2)

Natives vs Immigrants

Part of what irked me was that Prensky wrote as if we Digital Immigrants were somehow inferior to Digital Natives. I'm sure Bill Gates or Larry Page would take issue with being called an 'unintelligible foreigner' with regards to technology. Prenksy and articles agreeing with his analogy tended to take a stance that all counters to their argument were invalid and retorted with in a way akin to a petulant teenager 'You just don't understand!'

As Bayne & Ross (2011:162) put it

"Any critique of technology, its role in education, or its implementation, as long as it comes from an 'immigrant', can be quickly compartmentalised as belonging to a marginalised, illegitimate voice."

Over-simplification

Another thing I disliked about his Digital Native and Digital Immigrant analogy was that it was far too black and white. You're either a Native or an Immigrant. There was no grey area in between. In his conclusion (Prenksy 2001: 6), he urges Digital Immigrants to change their ways and that it's

"high time for them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!”

I wonder if Prensky was aware that the Nike 'Just Do It' campaign launched in 1988. Again, I saw this as another way to gleam over the harsher realities and make his idea more appealing.

I also found myself again more inclined to agree with Bayne & Ross (2011:160), who were in turn quoting Kerri Lee Krause:

"experiences and understandings of technology vary significantly according to socio-economic background, age and gender - the 'assumption of homogeneity is misleading and dangerous' she concludes(2007:138)" 

Analogy, not truth

My final complaint with Prensky's writings was that it drew parallels with areas of language learning and made tenuous comparisons with them to fit into his Digital Native ideology, passing them off as truths, when in fact they were ungrounded and simply constructs of his own making. Just because something fits in a metaphor, doesn't mean it is true in the real world.

"Smart adult immigrants accept that they don't know about their new world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate."

I would assume smart adult immigrants would try to assimilate into the culture themselves, and not through their children, but remember in Prensky's world this is an impossibility. While I can see the idea he is trying to put across, where the children are immersed in a new language or culture and have an advantage over their predecessors in this sense.  Sure, little Johnny could help his grandma set up an twitter account, but Granny could also learn it from her friends, a teacher or maybe look it up herself online. Also, as stated before, this greatly depends on various factors on Jonny's ability to help at all. If Granny doesn't have previous access to a computer, perhaps neither does Jonny.


Discussion, I think, is the essence of Prensky's idea. He set up this analogy in order to stir controversy and spark debate among the Educational community and it was not all doom and gloom. I did agree with many of the points he made and the overall idea he put forward that Digital Natives learn differently is very intriguing. In fact, I found Prensky's follow up From Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants to Digital Wisdom a lot more palatable.

"Technology alone will not replace intuition, good judgement, problem-solving abilities, and a clear moral compass"

                                                   (Prensky: 2009:1)

Digital Wisdom

In fact, I found the concept of digital wisdom pretty fascinating and how simple everyday things that I have taken for granted through the use of technology has freed our minds to concentrate on the larger picture, while the computer takes care of the more mundane tasks. Prenksy's so-called Wisdom Enhancement allows us many advantages as he (Prensky: 2009: 3) outlined as such:

• We make decisions based on only a portion of the available data.
• We make assumptions, often inaccurate, about the thoughts or intentions of others.
• We depend on educated guessing and verification (the traditional scientific method) to find new
answers.
• We are limited in our ability to predict the future and construct what-if scenarios.
• We cannot deal well with complexity beyond a certain point.
• We cannot see, hear, touch, feel, or smell beyond the range of our senses.
• We find it difficult to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously.
• We have difficulty separating emotional responses from rational conclusions.
• We forget.

The last example really struck a chord with me. Something so simple as forgetting a birthday or even what date it is, can often make me feel foolish, but a computer never forgets and the simple act of a Facebook reminder to wish someone a happy birthday, or a quick check on my smartphone to jot todays date on a form, spares me this foolishness.

However, the simple act of checking my phone for a birthday doesn't make me wise. It's the fact that I no longer need to waste my cognitive effort in remembering the date and can concentrate on other areas, such as thinking about what present to buy, who to invite etc., that allows my wisdom to flow. The number crunching power of computers have allowed mathematicians to theorise permutations involving enormous figures that would be physically impossible to do by hand in a lifetime.

"scientists no longer have to make educated guesses, construct hypotheses and models, and test them with data-based experiments and examples. Instead, they can mine the complete set of data for patterns that reveal effects, producing scientific conclusions without further experimentation"

(Prensky:2009: 4)

As I said in my previous post, I am a big fan of fantasy football, and I saw many similarities between it and the world of Digital Wisdom. The sheer wealth of data available to fantasy managers to draw conclusions about players is truly staggering. Simon March, last years winner of Fantasy Football, confessed that he didn't watch many games at all last season, and made most of his decisions based off of stats.

"There obviously are advantages to watching matches, though, but not being able to can force you to think about players differently and, perhaps, in terms closer to how FPL is scored. And adopting that mindset can definitely work to your favour"

Conclusion 

Whether Prensky was right or not to segregate humanity into Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants ultimately is not the question that needs answering. Technology is an ever-growing presence in our lives, and even more so, in the lives of the younger generations. As ever, how we adapt our teaching to suit the needs of the learner is central to our progression in education. What needs to be done to create a more suitable education system for the Digital Native or Digitally Wise? I have noticed that Week 6, the next week of our course deals with Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) and Personal Learning Environments (PLE). Could these be a true benefit to the youth of today or simply pandering to the 'buzzword' of a generation? Or is it simply a case where the the teacher has one more area of integration to work with in the classroom?

Bibliography;

1. Bayne, S. & Ross, J.  (2011) 'Digital Natives' and 'Digital Immigrants' Discourses. A Critique. In R. Land and S. Bayne (Eds.), Digital Difference: Perspectives on Online Learning. 2011. Sense Publishers. pp. 159-169
2. FANTASY FOOTBALL SCOUT, Interview - Simon March - Fantasy Premier League Winner [online]. London: Fantasy football Scout, 2015. [viewed 13 November 2015]. Available from: http://www.fantasyfootballscout.co.uk/2015/05/29/interview-simon-march-fantasy-premier-league-winner/
3. Prensky, M. (2001) Digital native, digital immigrants. On immigrants. On the Horizon 9, 5. MCB University Press 
4. Prensky, (2009) M. H.Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom. Innovate Online.