"...the single biggest problem facing education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language." (Prensky, 2. 2001). Education is changing, and unfortunately some educators are not. Is it their fault? Not necessarily.
In Prensky's article "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", he takes a deep look into the ever changing role of technology in schools. This generation's students have never known anything other than technology-- referred to as N-gen (Net) or D-gen (Digital), these Digital Natives speak the native language of technology. They've grown up with computers in every household, televisions in more than one room of the house, and video games being the norm for after school activities.
On the other side of the spectrum are Digital Immigrants; I am a digital immigrant. When I started school, computers were not part of the daily lessons, after school activities involved playing outside "until the street lights came on", and I did not have a cell phone until I went to college. Like me, many teachers are "immigrants"... they don't speak technology as a first language; they don't instinctly search online for the answer of a question, they call to see if their email arrived, and they print documents to edit instead of editing them on the computer.
Digital Immigrant teachers do a disservice to their students by thinking the way they were taught will still work for students now. That is not true. One point Prensky made was that Natives often have a hard time focusing in class- but maybe the fault doesn't lie in the students, maybe the fault lies in the lesson plans. If the teacher is not making a lesson plan that teaches as much, if not more, knowledge than what is being taught to them in real life situations, can they really be blamed for not paying attention?
In this, lies the ultimate question: do the digital natives take a step backward and learn the way their successors were taught, or do the digital immigrants "get with the times" and learn how to properly teach the kids of today, using the technology available to them? To me, the answer seems simple... the times are a'changin' and it seems so should the ways of teaching. How do they do this? By going a little faster- having faith the students can and will keep up with you; less step by steps, and more parallels- how can you help the students relate?
I think your summary question is a great way to sum up this reading. It seems like it is a huge matter of meeting somewhere in the middle and making sure that important information is not left behind and neither are students. I think until we find the balance we risk both of the above.
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