Marc Prensky: Futurist and Mapmaker, Coins "Digital Native" (maybe)

September 4, 9:27 PMSF Boomers ExaminerSuzanna Stinnett

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Just a few notes from Marc Prensky’s article on Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. (See Part 1, here.)

In case you haven’t seen this article by Marc Prensky, I’ll give you a couple of flashy spinners in hopes you’ll bite and continue this exploration. You know I am avid about bringing Boomers across the digital divide, and with brains like Marc Prensky’s in the playing field, we really have no excuse to sit on the sidelines.

Prensky states that the brains of “digital natives” are different. Using the metaphor of immigrants to describe adults in the world of digital natives, he points out that, historically, smart immigrants have accepted that they don’t know about their new world, and took advantage of their kids to help them learn and integrate. He suggests we must confront this issue of new-world natives in our educational models, and reconsider our methodology and our content. Here's an excerpt:

“First, our methodology. Today’s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. This doesn’t mean changing the meaning of what is important, or of good thinking skills. But it does mean going faster, less step-by-step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things…”

“Second, our content. It seems to me that after the digital “singularity” there are now two kinds of content: “Legacy” content (to borrow the computer term for old systems) and “Future” content.

“Legacy” content includes reading, writing, arithmetic, logical thinking, understanding the writings and ideas of the past, etc – all of our “traditional” curriculum. It is of course still important, but it is from a different era. Some of it (such as logical thinking) will continue to be important, but some (perhaps like Euclidean geometry) will become less so, as did Latin and Greek...”

“As educators, we need to be thinking about how to teach both Legacy and Future content in the language of the Digital Natives. The first involves a major translation and change of methodology; the second involves all that PLUS new content and thinking. It’s not actually clear to me which is harder – “learning new stuff” or “learning new ways to do old stuff.” I suspect it’s the latter.

“So we have to invent, but not necessarily from scratch. Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives has already been done successfully…”

And so I leave you to continue with Mr. Prensky, as I hope you are inspired to do. We are on to something here, Boomers learning the language of the new world. I’ll join you now in a brain-refreshing walk. Whew!

Suzanna

To see the first Glossary Series entry, click here.