Today's students - K through college - represent the first generations
to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives
surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players,
video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital
age. Today's 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). Computer games, email, the Internet,
cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.
It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the
sheer volume of their interaction with it, today's students think and
process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.
These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect
or realize. "Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain
structures, " says Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine. As
we shall see in the next installment, it is very likely that our
students' brains have physically changed - and are different from ours -
as a result of how they grew up. But whether or not this is literally
true, we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have
changed. I will get to how they have changed in a minute.
What should we call these "new" students of today? Some refer to them as
the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful
designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students
today are all "native speakers" of the digital language of computers,
video games and the Internet.
So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born
into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives,
become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new
technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants.
The importance of the distinction is this: As Digital Immigrants learn -
like all immigrants, some better than others - to adapt to their
environment, they always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that
is, their foot in the past. The "digital immigrant accent" can be seen
in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather
than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming
that the program itself will teach us to use it. Today's older folk were
"socialized" differently from their kids, and are now in the process of
learning a new language. And a language learned later in life,
scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain.
There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They
include printing out your email (or having your secretary print it out
for you - an even "thicker" accent); needing to print out a document
written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on
the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an
interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I'm sure
you can think of one or two examples of your own without much effort. My
own favorite example is the "Did you get my email?" phone call. Those
of us who are Digital Immigrants can, and should, laugh at ourselves and
our "accent."
But this is not just a joke. It's very serious, because the single
biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant
instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital
age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new
language.
This is obvious to the Digital Natives - school often feels pretty much
as if we've brought in a population of heavily accented, unintelligible
foreigners to lecture them. They often can't understand what the
Immigrants are saying. What does "dial" a number mean, anyway?
Lest this perspective appear radical, rather than just descriptive, let
me highlight some of the issues. Digital Natives are used to receiving
information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task.
They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite.
They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when
networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards.
They prefer games to "serious" work. (Does any of this sound familiar?)
But Digital Immigrants typically have very little appreciation for these
new skills that the Natives have acquired and perfected though years of
interaction and practice. These skills are almost totally foreign to the
Immigrants, who themselves learned - and so choose to teach - slowly,
step-by-step, one thing at a time, individually, and above all,
seriously. "My students just don't _____ like they used to," Digital
Immigrant educators grouse. I can't get them to ____ or to ____. They
have no appreciation for _____ or _____ . (Fill in the blanks, there are
a wide variety of choices.)
(continued in next post)
---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions Great stuff seeking new owners! Bid now!
