Digital Natives and Immigrants

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 by: Marc Prensky

Perhaps the
least understood and least appreciated notion among those who design
and deliver education today is the fact that our students have changed
radically. A really big discontinuity has taken place – the arrival and
rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the
20th century.

Today’s learners represent the first
generations to grow up with this new technology. The numbers are
overwhelming: over 10,000 hours playing videogames, over 10,000 hours
talking on digital cell phones; over 20,000 hours watching TV (a high
percentage fast speed MTV), over 200,000 emails and instant messages
sent and received; over 500,000 commercials seen—all before today’s
kids leave college. And, maybe, at the very most, 5,000 hours of book
reading.

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. “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain
structures, “ says Dr. Bruce D. Berry of Baylor College of Medicine.

Today’s
students are Digital Natives. They are “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 come to it later in our lives are, compared
to them, Digital Immigrants. And as we Digital Immigrants learn – like
all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their
environment, we always retain, to some degree, an "accent," that is,
our 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; in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming
that the program itself will teach us to use it; in printing out our
emails (or having our secretary print them out for us – an even
“thicker” accent); or in never changing the original ring of our cell
phone. 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today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated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.

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.

Digital Immigrant instructors 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.

Digital
Immigrant teachers typically 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
that assumption is no longer valid. Today’s learners are different.

The
people sitting in their classes grew up on the “twitch speed” of video
games and MTV. They are used to the instantaneity of hypertext,
downloaded music, phones in their pockets, a library on their laptops,
beamed messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked most or
all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures,
step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction.

So is
it that the Digital Natives can’t pay attention, or that they choose
not to? Often from the Natives’ point of view their Digital Immigrant
instructors make their education not worth paying attention to compared
to everything else they experience – “Every time I go to school I have
to power down,” complains one student – and then they blame them for
not paying attention! And, more and more, the Digital Natives won’t
take it.

So what should happen? Should we force the
Digital Native students to learn the old ways, or should their Digital
Immigrant educators learn the new? Unfortunately, no matter how much
the Immigrants may wish it, it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives
will go backwards. In the first place, it may be impossible – their
brains may already be different. It also flies in the face of
everything we know about cultural migration. Kids born into any new
culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist using the
old. Smart adult immigrants accept that they don’t know about their new
world and take advantage of their kids to help them learn and
integrate. Not-so-smart (or not-so-flexible) immigrants spend most of
their time grousing about how good things were in the “old country.”

So
unless we want to just forget about educating Digital Natives until
they grow up and do it themselves, Digital Immigrants had better
confront this issue. It’s time to stop grousing, and as the Nike motto
of the Digital Native generation says, “Just do it!” If you don’t know
how, just watch your kids!

About the Author

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill, 2001). Marc is founder and CEO of Games2train, a game-based learning company, and founder of The Digital Multiplier, an organization dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in learning worldwide. He is also the creator of the sites and . Marc holds an MBA from Harvard and a Masters in Teaching from Yale. More of his writings can be found at . More of Marc’s writings on the positive effects of video games can be found at www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp.

marc@games2train.com

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