Digital Natives

So I really have a bee in my bonnet about digital natives. I realized after reading the Prensky article that I've been dealing with the idea of digital natives my whole teaching career; I didn't know it at the time. I really feel, based on my personal experiences, that labeling generations as digital natives and then assuming that technology is the answer for everything is really shortsighted. This is why some of the readings for this week that pushed back against digital nativism really stuck with me, especially the Kirschner & De Bruyckere article. Kids can't multi-task. I can't even multi-task effectively, and there's so much we still don't know about education. Education, as a whole, is still a very young field. We have established best practices, but those change over time too. So in the context of that, digital nativism is just one more way for teachers to fail at their jobs. I touched on this in the discussions for this week, but what I didn't mention is that I don't think digital nativism has changed the way we learn. Just thinking back to when I took Theories of Learning and Cognition, and even within the different established frameworks, we know that some things are more effective than other things, but there's no one right answer for all learners, and for me, that's the danger in fully embracing the thinking of digital nativism without looking at people/learns as individuals. 

More than anything, I don't think technology has changed how (like the actual process of constructing our own understandings) we learn, but it has changed how we consume information. I'm excited about confronting my thinking on this topic, because I am admittedly biased, and really found my thinking resonating with the myths of digital nativism. What do you think? Am I the one being too narrow in my thinking? Would love to hear your thoughts! 

Comments

  1. Sarah StraughnMay 22, 2022 at 6:16 PM

    I don't think that you're being narrow in your thinking at all. If anything I think that you're pushing back against the "narrowness" of Prensky. When I first read what he had to say about digital natives, I fully agreed. Kids are great with tech and they can learn a lot this way. However, when you pointed out that maybe not all kids have access to the same technology, I started thinking about my own students and how they all come from different types of homes. You pointing this out to me made me do some of my own readings about digital natives, so I think that we are on the same thought process.

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