Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky (Notes)

Basically, i am going to write up the sections from the article which i found important, in note formation.

This so-called "singularity" is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century. Today's average college grads have spent less than 5000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).

...We can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed.

The "new" students of today have been dubbed as 'Digital Natives'. Our students today are all "native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

Those people who were not born into the digital age, but have become facinated by most aspects of the new technology are dubbed "Digital Immigrants". Particular traits of the "Digital Immigrant" include turning to the internet for information SECOND rather than first and printing out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather then just editing on the screen).

The major problem, however, is the fact that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an oudated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language... (Digital Natives).

Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.

However, Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these new skills that Natives have acquired. Essentially, Digital Immigrants think that learning can't (or shouldn't be fun). The Digital Natives have no care for lectures, step-by-step logic and tell-test instruction. They are used to hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops etc.

Digital Immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been, and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now.. but this assumption is no longer valid.

Today's teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students.

Second, the content. "Legacy"content 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.

Future content is to a large extent, not surprisingly, digital and technological.

We need to invent Digital Natives methodologies for all subjects, at all levels, using our students to guide us. It's dumb and lazy of educators - not to mention ineffective- to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach and that the Digital Natives "language" is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea.