Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants

What is your first impression after watching this video?

What are Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants? It is actually the term adopted by many to represent the current generation growing up with modern technology (Digital Natives) and the current generation having to now learn how to use current devices (Digital Immigrants).

You will be able to judge whether you’re a Native or an Immigrant, although, this doesn’t matter too much. What is vital, is the observation that the current generation going through the education system are Digital Natives, while the individuals educating them, will all be Digital Immigrants. Is this even a problem?

 

Understanding the first generation of digital natives

The first generation of “Digital Natives” is coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed.

The Generational Clash Crisis at Home, School and Work

The differences between the generations inevitably result in tension, misunderstanding and conflict at home, between parents and children, at the workplace, between management and the workforce, and in schools, between teachers and students or even older and younger teachers and staff. Certain subjects make many digital immigrant parents, teachers, supervisors and bosses concerned and upset. With technology moving so fast it is hard for digital immigrants to keep up. Understandably, the same subjects make children, students and workers feel misunderstood and disrespected. Conflict seems inevitable on all three fronts.

Education, is the single largest problem facing the digital world as our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Immigrants suffer complications in teaching natives how to understand an environment which is "native" to them and foreign to Immigrants. 

“Our students have changed radically. 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…”  Mark Prensky

College and university instructors, and gradually more high and even middle school teachers, routinely face situations where throughout lectures, labs, or discussion groups students update their Facebook profiles, text, surf the net, Tweet, respond to email, and much more. High school instructors and college professors and administrators are also concerned that many students spend long hours on their cell phones and online gaming during all times of the day and night, resulting in exhausted and unfocused students. They are concerned that the Internet dumbs down the students' minds due to the distractibility effect and the concurrent lack of focus and concentration on non-technical subjects.

As usual, there is another side to the coin. Digital technologies and the Internet have revolutionized the way people gather information and acquire new knowledge. Gone are the days when only a handful of Buddhist monks have access to the original bhagavad gita and other sacred texts. With a click of a button, any person who is wired to the web can access millions of documents, ranging from books, to poems, to articles and so much more. Knowledge no longer comes primarily from library books and the lecture podium.

Along the same lines, natives view the quest of knowledge as a participatory process; this is best shown in Wikipedia. Knowledge, truth and facts are no longer accessed via the 'all-mighty' Encyclopedia, but instead are being co-created and continuously revised on Wikipedia and similar sites. The issues of accessibility and attitudes towards the acquisition of knowledge have a profound effect on the relationships between professors and students and, in more general terms, between teachers and learners. People without formalized college or post-graduate education can become experts through individual research and discussion with scholars met online. Because of this capacity to gather and create new information, natives often view themselves as equal or - in terms of technology - superior to their professors. The old hierarchy is gone.

Generally speaking, digital natives prefer to scan shorter text rather than thoroughly read longer text. Participatory culture is the norm for young people, and digital natives are not inspired by passive learning. This creates predictable, serious problems between digital immigrant teachers who are anything but eager adopters and their students, who see the instruction to sit and receive as archaic.

It is obvious that educational systems must change and catch up to modern times. At a basic level, this means changing the educational model to be more participatory and less passive.

Schools need to churn out students who are excited about learning and ready to thrive in the world as they meet it after high school. This means that students should be proficient in: Microsoft Office (including Word, Excel, Powerpoint); they should know how to write a business-appropriate email (no texting abbreviations); when it is and is not appropriate to text; when to turn off their phones; how to handle security breaches online (in the forms of sexual pictures of self or friends, stolen identity, bad online reviews, etc.). Today's schools are doing none of this - and are doing their students a grave disservice in the process.

The knowledge of how to use digital technology is easily available. It is time for more educators to change, adapt and utilize modern technologies to engage our students in the creative adventure of education, so the students are intrigued and enthusiastic participants rather than reluctant, passive, unprepared-for-the-world learners.

What is the world digital natives creating going to look like?

What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? 

What is the Internet's impact on creativity and learning?