Be friendly with the Natives

I would consider myself a digital transient, because I am right on the cusp of Immigrant and Native. I remember the first home game consul (Atari) and the first time we brought home a movie on Beta. We had a computer in our classroom when I was in elementary school, but it wasn’t used for anything except basic math and spelling games. My senior year of High School we were required to take a computer class, but in reality all we did was learn how to use the computer as a word processor. I have been exposed to technology for my entire life, but the fact that I lived in areas that were slow to get things like cable and internet have slowed my integration into its use. I have also spent the majority of my life working in the wilderness, where prior to the widespread use of GPS, Satellite Phones, and Solar Panels, the most high tech equipment we had were headlamps, and personal stereos.

My experiences with technology in the classroom as a student and a teacher have been fairly limited. In High School there was overhead projectors and film projectors, and in college that became Power Point and DVD. The technology that was available to me in high school was essentially as good as was available at the time for a poor school district in rural Oregon, we felt pretty lucky that our school had a laserdisc player. When I arrived at college there was an expectation that everyone would use a computer, but it was mostly for the sake of convenience, all of our papers were turned in by hand, and all of our research was done at the library. The real breakthrough for me as a student came with the growth of the internet, all of a sudden we began to spend less and less time at the library and more and more in the computer lab.

The articles from Prensky have helped me better understand the argument for the use of technology in the classroom. “Todays average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).” (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants . (2001). Retrieved July 17, 2010 from CU Blackboard: http://webct.cu-portland.edu/​webct/​urw/​lc9140001.tp0/​ cobaltmainframe.dowebct.) It gives me more perspective on why children have a desire for education to involve technology. I did take issue with Prensky’s assertion that digital native’s brains are actually different. While I believe that there is credible evidence that would suggest there is a correlation between brain development and stimulus there is no evidence that Digital Natives brains are physically differnt, Prensky himself states, “…we haven’t yet directly observed Digital Natives’ brains to see whether they are physically different…” (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. (2001), but he uses this supposition as the basis for his entire argument. While Prensky eloquently makes the case that I as an educator should engage my tech savvy student or I’ll enrage them “These kids are used to having anyone who asks for their attention—their musicians, their movie makers, their TV stars,their game designers work really hard to earn it” (Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants . (2001) this does little to address the fact that when these Digital Natives reach the work force they will most likely be working for Digital Immigrants who will have little or no interest in entertaining their employees. They will be employed by people who expect them to self motivate and produce high quality work no matter what the job is. So in the end my question is you’re a Digital Native congratulations, Who Cares?