When in Rome.com

Minding the Generational Gap

According to “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, an article written by Marc Prensky in 2001, the digital native and digital immigrant divide is the ever-growing gap that separates kids of this generation from their educators. Prensky posits that digital natives grow up in a world surrounded by technology, therefore they are natives when it comes to using it. They think in parallel and can multitask. Digital immigrants, however, are older people who don’t quite speak the same language. Digital immigrants teach the way they were taught – slow, in chronological order, and seriously. 

It is an interesting thought. We’ve all seen 4-year-olds who can’t spell whiz through YouTube on an iPad and get directly to the video they want by mimicking the digital keyboard inputs their parents used and following the helpful suggestion that is italicized or marked as visited before. Based on Prensky’s theory, that kid and his future teacher – unless education moves to a digital native friendly language – won’t be able to communicate effectively, leaving the student bored and unwilling to learn.

Prensky also lays out that children, these digital natives, are inherently good multitaskers. Paul Kirschner tends to disagree. Not only has effective multitasking been scientifically debunked, but it also has been proven to cause a loss of focus. In fact, Kirschner disagrees with Prensky’s entire premise of the digital native. He argues that a growing body of research from a number of different countries and cultures point to the contrary. His stance is that there is no magic age whereby someone is endowed with deep technological knowledge. There is a bit of concession when it comes to superficial activities like email, Facebook, and general browsing. A student’s knack for locating websites that interest them should not be the basis for a teacher or teacher trainer to change the curriculum.

Personally, I find a little merit in each author’s view.