Reflection of CSpeck on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky (Parts I & II)

In "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", Mark Prensky turns the tables on the debate over school reform by shifting the focus from what has changed in the educational system to what has changed in the studentPRENSKY DIGITAL NATIVES. In fact, he points back to what has not changed, and what probably should change in our educational system and our teaching methods to better align with the needs of the new generations of "Digital Natives." By characterizing the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century as a "singularity," he elevates this event in our awareness as a kind of cataclysmic cultural event that has created a digital divide, so-to-speak, between generations.

While I do not believe that this entirely accounts for the decline in the educational system, Prensky is definitely onto a paradigm shift that must occur among educators if we are to make the system work optimally for today's students. There are many other factors at play including the relative sparsity in the implementation of basic and proven approaches to lesson planning such as Backwards Design and the foundation of lesson planning on essential questions and key understanding that has shown profoundly more successful results in countries such as Japan, Germany, and India (see Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
) with the same kind of Digital Native generation. Our need to get away from rote, passive note-taking, lecture-based teaching and much of the "coverage" based curriculum is actually independent of the "digital age", but we can and should leverage the Digital Natives' aptitude and facility with the technology to better engage the student and optimize the learning experience.

So while I agree whole-heartedly with Prensky's points, there are some missed and we should not assume that a leap into the digital world itself will lead to better education. There are other factors and one point brought out by Prensky that the Boomer generation perhaps can help with is in the area of reflection and critical thinking.

As a Baby Boomer and parent of two "Digital Natives" myself, I think I can echo and emphasize the concern my generation has with the apparent deemphasis on reflection and critical thinking skills in the Digital Natives. There is a tendency to think in different ways when we are bombarded by the products of a "sound bite" or "video bite" environment, and while I greatly appreciate, admire, and rely on my two Digital Native children's fluency in the so-called digital world and their abilities to multi-task and "parallel process," I find that many times I can balance, stabilize, and focus their "twitch-speed" reflexive thinking to better ends by my "old-fashioned" ways. We need to take the best from both worlds and not lose the thread of all that preceded and, in fact, led to the advent of the digital age. As Isaac Newton said, "If I see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" Never forget that.

I think their is another fundamental concern we should also consider and that is the apparent correlation between the explosion of Attention Deficit type disorders in the Digital Native Generation. That is very real and disturbing and a point that Prensky misses (I think). I found a couple pertinent online references for this that you can check out at http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/adhd.html> and at
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1635698

So, maybe if we work together we can help each other and make it all better---that is one "think" that will never change.