Nowadays,
the way in which children learn has changed largely while the educational system
has not kept pace with it, and that has been subject of many authors investigation.
Today, we are going to focus on Marc Prensky’s work “Digital Natives, Digital
immigrants”. According to him, a key concept to understand this problem is the
role that digital technology has occupied in society in the late 20th
Century. As the name of his article implies, he divides the digital society
into two main categories: Natives and
immigrants. The former makes reference to those who were born and grew up in
the US surrounded by digital technology. The latter would include elder people
who, in a way, adopted technology, but always keeping one foot in the past.
Prensky’s
research motivated others to investigate and discuss this issue, resulting in significant
controversies. In this entry we would
like to express our opinion regarding the points he left aside when defining
digital natives and immigrants. Is he absolutely right when saying that you are
a digital native only if you have a certain age and are born in the USA? What
other aspects should be considered? We think
that seeing age as one variable for this division is not entirely wrong but he
is not taking into account that a big percentage of people of the same age, who
live in the same country, may not have access to technology due to their
socio-economic background.
What about
those who neither their economic background, nor the country’s policies allow
them to have access to technology? In some places, the political system limits
people’s connections with the rest of the world, so as to control the
information they receive and the knowledge that masses can get. A good example
of this may be Cuba, where they cannot have Wi-Fi connection, and also if you
are a tourist and you ask for a Wi-Fi password you have to pay expensive fees
for it.
It is a
fact technology gives us many tools to be used in the classroom, but teachers have the responsability of being informed on how to use those tools, striking a balance between the old way, and the
new one. The role of the teacher in today’s education is crucial as he/she is
the one in charge of motivating learners by exploiting all the potential that
technology has, but also has to help learners develop imagination and
creativity on their own, as “immigrants” did.
