Grumbling again Gladys? Digital issues

  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)