Week 4 - Discussion
According to Prensky, what is the immigrant/native divide, and how has it affected how students learn?
Prensky posits that those who grew up in the presence of technology are adapted to technology and therefore can easily integrate new technologies into their lives. This group he labels the digital natives. The second group is the digital immigrants, these people were raised before the dawn of the digital era, they have to learn to integrate technology into their daily lives. Digital natives vs. immigrants have different learning styles due to the amount and way they receive information. Digital natives prefer an interactives approach to learning that utilizes media tools to make their experience more engaging while digital immigrants prefer a more traditional approach to learning. Another way in which Prensky highlights the differences between the two groups is media/online literacy. Prensky theorizes that due the vast amount of information that digital natives have access to, they have more difficulties than digital immigrants when determining what a credible source is.
What are some other myths Kirschner associated with Prensky's findings from 2001?
In Kirschner's 2013 paper he debunks several "myths" that were laid out in Prensky's earlier work. One such myth is the idea of digital immigrants vs. natives. Kirschner states that just because one is born in a generation labeled digital natives or immigrant does not mean that your are inherently better or worse at using technology. Being technologically literate does not come naturally to one generation or the other, with proper education technology can be a useful tool for both digital natives and immigrants. Another skill Prensky ascribes to digital natives is their developed ability of multitasking. While Prensky argues that technology has made multitasking essential for digital native learning Kirschner claims that multitasking leads to cognitive overload and is ultimately not a useful learning tool.
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