Digital Natives: A Debate


e-Newsletter

Digital NativesDigital Natives: A Debate
 In 2001, Mark Prensky first introduced his now-famous term "Digital Natives". Applying it initially in an educational context, Prensky used the term to explain how children today no longer fit our stereotype of them. Technology has redefined what a student can do and what a teacher should do to cope with these changes.
 
Prensky states that since the Digital Natives are born with all sorts of technology surrounding them, they have become 'native speakers' of the digital language. Similarly, older generations are new to this world, and are thus "Digital Immigrants." While children speak computers, internet, online social networking and video games, older generations speak printed documents and bring people to their office to show them a website.

The term has been embraced by many thinkers and education experts who believe it embodies our constantly changing world due to technology, with the early 1990s (the emergence of the internet) considered the start of the digital age. Recently, however, the concept has been reviewed and debated by experts and practitioners. At ictQATAR's second ICT in Education Conference, the debate on the "Digital Natives" concept was vibrant.

Gavin Dykes, a senior consultant for the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) and keynote speaker at the conference, disagrees with the validity of the term 'digital native.

"Personally, I am not terribly comfortable with Prensky's term. I think the reason is because I am told to be one. Young people use technology in a much more adapted way than do older people; but such a term becomes an excuse to hide behind. I think it's more about the culture, and everyone of us can be a digital native in our way. If we have a culture of innovation, we can take on board the use of technology. We can be excited about the use of technology, and be able to work with it."

Dykes, who has long worked on innovation in the field of education, used a recent web 2.0 situation as an example. In a small Scottish city, the closing of schools was causing much controversy. A serious of very organized protests broke out and all the placards at the protests carried the same message.

BECTA examined how the protests were organized so quickly and cohesively and found out that on facebook the teachers had set up a small community where they shared resources and organized themselves for their cause. Students used a different social networking site, Bebo to organize their protests.

"Technology was being used to develop a view but the digital natives were both the elder people and the younger people who used slightly different technologies to support their views, but both effectively. It's all about how one uses technology to define oneself," said Dykes.

Mona Youness, Managing Editor of the Teacher Network at the Supreme Education Council, believes that the issue of Digital Natives should be viewed differently. In her workshop titled "Developing Interactive e-Content", Youness explains that stopping at the superficial level of natives versus immigrants will not yield any actual results.

She acknowledges that today's children are indeed natives to technology, yet the issue is never about the availability of technology. "It's all about the attitudes towards technology. We need to understand the psychology of a digital native. Children now get bored quickly, especially in the classroom. Nevertheless, you find them rushing to their laptops as soon as they reach home to check their emails, and spend hours on the internet. Why do they do this? What are their motives? That's the key issue".

Doug Brown, another expert at BECTA also has a different take on the concept. "Mark Prensky originally used this term to describe how young people grow with technology, how they are native to it since it is part of their lives. Older people find technology more challenging. They don't understand that world, thus they are immigrants to that world. I actually think it should be challenged the other way round. One of the things that stops the introduction of ICT in education is that the community of educators - the educational system, managers and everybody in it, tend not to be not immigrants to the ICT systems they use, but natives to the system in place. I see the older generation as natives who are fearful of the immigrants coming in with new ideas and approaches. We as educators always feel a bit of a challenge when we see these young people come into our system and try to change its nature and we tend to react against that, believing that we know better and can do better than younger people. We need to ask ourselves whether this is true or not."

The concept of Digital Natives and Immigrants will likely continue to be debated for some time to come, but there is no doubt that information and communication technology is rapidly changing the world we live in. 

- By: Mina Nagy





Add Comments