Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

 

a.       Who are Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students as categorized by the author?

           Digital Native students:  By Marc Prensky digital native refer to the students today all "Native Speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet.

           Digital Immigrant teacher: The people who doesn't born in digital world become smitten by the digital and adopted many of the new technology.  

b.       List down 3 differences between Digital Immigrant teachers and Digital Native students?

* Digital Immigrant teachers:

1-  Prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.

2- Prefer singular processing and single or limited tasking.

3- Prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video.

* Digital Native students:

1- Prefer to interact/network simultaneously with many others.

2- Prefer receiving information quickly from multiple multimedia sources.

3-  Prefer learning that is relevant, instantly useful and fun.

c.       What is meant by Digital immigrant accent? List down three examples of “digital immigrant accents.”?

      The digital immigrant accent includes going slowly, going step-by-step, using outlines for organization, reading manuals, going to the internet second rather than first. Digital natives find this accent and approach very hard to deal with.

Examples:

1- Printing out your E-mail.

2- Print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it.
3- Bring people physically into your office to see an interesting website.

d.       According to the author, hat is the biggest serious problem facing education today?

       According to the Marc Prensky the biggest problem facing education today is " our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language ( That of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language.

e.       “Should the Digital Natives learn the old way, or should their Digital Immigrants learn the new?”

          Of course some people still learn in the old ways, teach brilliantly in the old paradigms, are not TV watchers, are totally bilingual, and the like. However, the student and educator cultures that I call Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants are not only different in their languages and approaches, but diverge farther every day. From point of view it seem impossible. Few instructors today are comfortable with the languages and implications of blogs, multimedia, massive multiplayer, online games, instant messaging, "moddling" smart and alternative realities.

f.       What should the Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives?

          Digital Immigrant educators they should confront this issue. All their students – they will have to change. It's high time for them to stop their grousing, and as the Nike motto of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!” They will succeed in the long run – and their successes will come that much sooner if their administrators support them.