Digital Natives v. Digital Immigrants

 

 GIF

1) According to Prensky what is the immigrant/native divide, and how has it affected how students learn? Prensky defined digital natives as people who grew up with technology and do not know the world without it. I am a digital native. Digital immigrants are people who grew up without technology and have had to adapt to using it more and more in daily life. In the "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" article Prensky opens with saying that "Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." Because the younger generations have been swept up in technology their whole life, whats taught nowadays is not as stimulating for the mind as video games and TV. Prensky proposed that lesson plans should be structured to better engage the student instead of reading off of powerpoint slides or out of a textbook. Because of the way school is run and all the distractions caused by technology students are not learning as well as they were. I think there is a better way for students to learn that incorporates the new technology that is constantly being developed. 

2) What are some other myths Kirschner associated with Prensky's findings from 2001? 

Kirschner remarks on multitasking in the article "The myths of the digital native and the multitasker." Multitasking is the thought that you can do more than two things at once. He says that the human brain does not have the capabilities to multitask we think it has. Kirschner goes on to mention a study under the heading "Deleterious effects of multitasking," that tracked students who were low Facebook users v. students who where high Facebook users. They found that the students who were low Facebook users took the extra time to learn the material and they did better on tests, whereas high Facebook users did not take the extra time to learn the material and they did significantly worse on the tests. He ends the article with the thought that all people need to be taught the negative effects of multitasking.