This article was written in 2004 by Marc Prensky, defining the difference between digital immigrants and digital natives and the effect that has on teaching.
I have a number of issues with his concepts.
Firstly, he states that 'Digital Immigrant instructors typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected though years of interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the Immigrants, who themselves learned – and so choose to teach – slowly, step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously.'
I don't agree with this sentence whatsoever... although I have found some older people (immigrants) to struggle with the concept of new media, people that are in the teaching/instructing position always have a good knowledge, and I don't think this alters the way in which we are taught. I certainly don't think it hinders it.
Prensky seems to think that the only way in which teachers can teach digital natives is if they learn to adapt to digital methods of teaching, or force digital natives to learn in the traditional way. I don't see why this has to be such a big issue, surely it can't prevent learning to that extent? A mixture of traditional and new ways of learning could even be beneficial.
And do you want your leisure activities to become pedagogically polluted?
ReplyDelete(If drug taking was on the curriculum, would anybody do it in their leisure time? -Well actually, yes they did; Timothy Leary initially made students take LSD for credits in their psychology degree, but you get my point)