Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Hello guys! 

We are back with another weekly blog post, where I will be exploring written work from Marc Prensky and Paul Kirschner. 

According to Prensky, I would personally fall under the category of a Digital Native. In his work he describes there to be two different categories of people: Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. A Digital Native is someone born during or after the widespread adoption of digital technology. Prensky argues that digital natives are inherently familiar with digital devices, internet culture, and technological interfaces because they grew up in a digital world. A Digital Immigrant is someone born before the digital age who had to adapt to new technologies later in life. Prensky says that digital immigrants may struggle to fully understand new technology or may approach it with a more cautious mindset, applying older methods to newer systems like using the internet or accessing emails. I was born in 2005, meaning that I grew up surrounded with technology as more and more technological breakthroughs were being made. I think my generation has had greatly benefits from the use of technology and personally I think being educated about how to use it has immensely helped me. Technology has been a wonderful resource throughout my educational career, as it has helped me do research, communicate with teachers, learn concepts and do homework remotely. 

Here is a great article from The University of Business about the advantages and disadvantages of being a Digital Native: https://universitybusiness.co.uk/what-are-the-disadvantages-of-being-a-digital-native/#:~:text=Productivity%20Aspects%20for%20Digital%20Natives&text=These%20individuals%20are%20more%20likely,online%2C%20and%20access%20information%20efficiently.

In Paul Kirschner's writing, he addressed multiple myths about the work of Prensky. The first being that Digital Natives are merely "comfortable" with technology because they grew up using it, and Kirschner says that being comfortable does not equate to being savvy or talented at using it. He argues that both Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants need practice and proper teaching to master technology. Another myth associated with Prensky is that Digital Natives are better at multitasking because of their experience with technology. Kirschner argues against his claim saying that any person regardless of age, cannot truly multitask. They actually do something called "task switching" which actually reduces productivity and their quality of learning. Constantly switching between tasks disrupts cognitive processing and can lead to lower academic performance. Kirschner's belief's died not directly align with Prensky, but both pieces of their work are worth reading and analyzing.