Learning and the Digital Age?

Part of my fellowship year focus is to become more aware of the digital age and culture my students are fluent with. I have recently re-acquainted myself with the writings of Mark Prensky.

Mark Prensky (http://www.marcprensky.com/ ) coined the terms, 'digital natives and digital immigrants to describe the difference between this generation of students and their teachers. His articles 'Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - A New Way to Look At Ourselves and Our Kids' and the follow-up Part 2 - "Do They Really Think Differently?' are thought provoking even though written in 2001.   [Cartoon courtesy of www.creativityatwork.com]

They are available to read online.  The following excerpt provides interesting statistics!

"Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their 

parents.  The numbers are overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 

200,000 emails and instant messages sent and received; over 10,000 hours talking on 

digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high percentage fast speed MTV), 

over 500,000 commercials seen—all before the kids leave college. And, maybe, at the 

very most, 5,000 hours of book reading.  These are today’s “Digital Native” students. 1   

 

In Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants: Part I, I discussed how the differences between 

our Digital Native students and their Digital Immigrant teachers lie at the root of a great 

many of today’s educational problems. I suggested that Digital Natives’ brains are likely 

physically different as a result of the digital input they received growing up.  And I 

submitted that learning via digital games is one good way to reach Digital Natives in their 

“native language.”   

 

Here I present evidence for why I think this is so.  It comes from neurobiology, social 

psychology, and from studies done on children using games for learning. "

 

I am keen to read his latest article, flagged as coming in March - 'Turning On the Lights'. His website has a wealth of knowledge, resources and ideas. Checkout his powerpoint "Give Us 21st Century Tools" 2004!

This year Mark wrote about the new scribe of the 21st century. His comparison between the power of the scribes of the written word in the past and the scribes of the digital language of today are interesting:

"I believe fluency with multiple spoken languages will continue to be important, and that multimedia, interactivity, and other game-derived devices will be increasingly significant tools for communicating twenty-first-century thought. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the true key literacy of the new century lies outside all these domains.

I believe the single skill that will, above all others, distinguish a literate person is programming literacy, the ability to make digital technology do whatever, within the possible one wants it to do -- to bend digital technology to one's needs, purposes, and will, just as in the present we bend words and images. Some call this skill human-machine interaction; some call it procedural literacy. Others just call it programming."

How many of us cannot make digital technology do what we we want it to and are in fact frightened to try?

They are outside our comfort zone and require thought processes and skills that are not inherent in our repertoire. My first step in my quest to better understand these technologies is to explore my cell-phone,the i-pod and i-tunes then lurch into online games!!!