The final ICT portfolio task:

Summaries of reading and discussion.

Article one: Digital Natives. Digital Immigrants. By M Prensky (2001)

In this article Prensky discusses how the children of today are totally different than the last generation. They have changed, but not in the way seen previous generations. It is not just the fashions and languages that are used, instead this is a huge change in which there is no going back. This change is due to the ‘arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology’ (pg1). The describes how this is the first generation to be born into this digital age. Prensky suggests that due to this technology, this generation is able to think and process information differently. The term that he uses for this digital generation is ‘digital natives’ (p1) as they are all native speakers of the digital language. This makes the rest of the population, ‘digital immigrants’ because we have adopted this digital language later in our lives, we have had to learn to adapt to this new digital environment, but may not be completely comfortable with it because we can remember the pre-digital past.

Prensky then goes on to discuss how the biggest problem with education is that the digital natives are being taught by digital immigrants who are speaking an out of date language. They need to work in a different way, in their native digital way and education just can’t keep up with this. Digital immigrants don’t believe that the natives can learn whilst watching the TV or surfing the net, but this is just because they can’t. However, Prensky is stating that today’s learners are different. He suggests that smart immigrants accept the difference in the world and take advantage of their native pupils to help them learn and integrate. He also suggests that this change in the world doesn’t change what is important in education, but it does mean going faster and in a slightly different way. He suggests inventing computer games, but suggests that this can be very daunting and possibly impossible for the immigrant to master or even accept.

Prensky sums up the article by stating that if the digital immigrant educators want to keep teaching in this new digital age, they must change.

Article two: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part 2 Do they really think differently?

By M Prensky (2001)

This article follows on from the Prensky article reviewed above. This article goes into more detail into his claim in the first article that the teaching of digital natives should be via digital games as this is a good way for digital immigrants to reach the natives in their own native language. He states that recent neurobiology research shows that stimulation can actually change the brain’s structure throughout life and affect the way people think. The brain reorganizes itself throughout life. He also discusses how thinking patterns can change depending upon a person’s life experiences. It is a recent belief that people that grow up on different cultures do not just think about different things, in fact they actually think differently. And their way that people are raised actually affects the thought processes. However, he does not admit that the digital native’s brains have not yet been directly observed to see whether there are any physical differences between the native and the immigrant brain. Prensky suggests that this brain change does not happen over night. Humans have been training their speech orientated brains to be able to read by constant practice. It is the same to train our brains to function in the digital manner. However, this is easier for the natives, as the new generation have a very different blend of cognitive skills than the immigrants.

Prensky suggests that the natives do not in fact have short attention spans; they just have short attention spans for the old ways of learning. It is not that they can’t pay attention, they just simply do not want to. However he does suggest that the thing that has been lost by the natives is the skill of reflection. The challenge for the educators is to develop a way of teaching the natives reflection in their own language.

Prensky does not suggest that all computer games help children to learn, many are badly designed. However, good ones do produce lots of learning and engage the children. However, these are regularly rejected by educators as ‘sugar coating’ but this is because the children are enjoying their learning. However, he suggests that they should be real games, not just ‘drill with eye candy’.

After my experience in school, I can completely understand and agree with most of the theories that Prensky is putting forward in these two articles. I feel that he was right to move his ideas on in the second article because he left many sweeping statements unjustified in the first, such as the extent of use of computer games in education. However, I feel that he has left out a generation that comes in between the natives and the immigrant. I am one of these people. I was born in the 1980s. I do not feel that I am an immigrant because I was brought up with technology, we had computers through out my education (not many of them but we did have them) but technology has moved on at a tremendous rate since then. I do feel at times that I am being left behind and that the children develop amazing skills at a very young age but I also feel that I am not intimidated by developing and practicing my skills in ICT.

965 words, due date: April 23, 2008.