It was in
2001 that a document by Marc Prensky introduced the terms “Digital Natives” and “Digital
Immigrants”, which he coined in an attempt to show the difference between
people who were born with digital technologies and those who preceded them. The focus
of his –if I can call them– concerns were on education, and fifteen years later
most of them still seem to be existing. Since I don’t want to bore you with any
kind of summary, here it can be read (it’s 6 pages long). Nevertheless, I’ve been pondering about two
striking ideas that caught my attention.
One of them
was “Digital Immigrants think learning
can’t (or shouldn’t) be fun. Why should they – they didn’t spend their
formative years learning with Sesame Street.” (2001:3) This sounds (seems?)
like the author hasn’t had any “funny” teacher, one who transformed the
teaching of a dull, prosy text from a book into a catching lesson with tons of amazement
and amusement. I’m sure that he didn’t actually mean what he said.
The other,
which I completely agreed with, was the conclusion: “So if Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives
– i.e. all their students – they will have to change. It’s high time for them
to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation
says, “Just do it!” They will succeed in the long run – and their successes
will come that much sooner if their administrators support them.” (2001:6)
Apart from the grousing part which
was hilarious because it was/is reasonably representative (and it immediately made me recall one text we've dealt with in phonetics and phonology in the first year), the last words are
like floating in a sea of uncertainty. What if those administrators are also like
the grumbling crew of Digital Immigrants? It seems that there’s no possible twist!
Or is it some way, from the part of the students or a younger generation of
leaders? What is your comment?
Source: Prensky, M. (n.d.). "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." From On the
Horizon (NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)
