Week 4 - Prensky's & Kirschner's Research on the Digital World

We live in a society that continuously evolves and one of those things that has evolved is our technology, including our amount of usage of technology. We can see it everywhere nowadays, especially at our fingertips or hands. Most of us live in the digital world. There also have been a number of research done on the digital world and a number of opinions. Paul A. Kirschner and Marc Prensky are examples of people who have provided their input. 

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According to Prensky, what is the immigrant/native divide, and how has it affected how students learn? 

There are two divides that Prensky mentioned and one of them is called the digital immigrants or the immigrant divide. The digital immigrants are usually the people who have been born into a world without the digital aspect. At some point, digital immigrants have adapted to some areas of the digital world such as using computers, but will retain some habits of their pre-digital world. One example of these pre-digital habits would be printing out a document to read instead of reading it on the screen. 

The other divide that Prensky has mentioned is the digital natives or the native divide. They are people who have grown up with the technology we have today such as smartphones and grew up with the slang, memes, and more. They majorly use the digital world more often compared to the digital immigrants. 

According to Prensky, both of these divides have affected how students learn. According to him digital immigrant teachers/instructors struggle to teach digital natives due to the differences of "digital languages." Digital immigrants' language is more outdated compared to digital natives. Students may also resist the teaching styles of their instructors due to "They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops, beamed messages and instant messaging." (Prensky, 2012) There are a few other reasons Prensky has stated but these are a couple of the reasons why there may be a divide. 

Kirschner some of the myths associated with Prensky's findings. One of the myths he discusses is that being a 'digital native' doesn't necessarily mean one is 'digitally literate.'’ What does he mean? 

From my findings, Kirschner may be stating that when one is a digital native it does not mean they might be well versed in the digital world. In the article he wrote, "Finally, McNaught, Lam, and Ho (2009) found that “so-called digital natives (students) were not always more digitally-oriented than the so-called immigrants (teachers)” (p. 10)." (Kirschner, 2017) He also argued that digital literacy must be taught like any other skill we learn, "The skills and competences attributed to this generation of students are the same as any other skills and competences, namely that they need to be properly taught and acquired before they can be applied." (Kirschner, 2017) Therefore that without being taught the skills of the digital world despite being born in the digital world, they may not be as digitally literate. They may not posses the skills to critically evaluate information found online, format documents online, or perhaps not understand online safety. 

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References: 

Prensky, M. (2012). From digital natives to digital wisdom : hopeful essays for 21st century learning. Corwin.

Kirschner, P. A., & De Bruyckere, P. (2017). The myths of the digital native and the multitasker. Teaching and Teacher Education, 67, 135–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.06.001