Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

Hi everyone! I can't believe this is already my fourth blog post! Thanks for tagging along! Today I am going to be talking about the concept of digital competency.

The digital world is always growing and changing and it's a lot to keep up with, especially for generations that didn't grow up with all of this technology. Prensky described the immigrant/native divide as the generational gap between the people that adapted to technology later in life and those who grew up with it. This has had a big impact on how students learn because due to technology younger generations don't have the patience for teaching methods that have proven successful in the past. Prensky states that the step-by-step and tell-test instructions won't work anymore, students don't have the patience. When teachers are using these now seemingly ineffective teaching practices, students won't be able to learn and retain information at full potential.  Prensky says that we are at a point in time where today's students cannot be expected to go backwards. It is time for educators and adults to adapt to the new ways so that we can work together to integrate knowledge and close the gap between digital immigrants and natives.  Reflecting on this divide in my own life, the pandemic and online learning came to mind. Online teaching brought forth a lot of new challenges. When my school had finally switched to online/zoom classes I had one teacher that had a particularly hard time working with zoom. This led to a lot of wasted class time and added confusion which was evidently frustrating for both parties. After reading the articles for this week I was left with a lot of reflection about this experience specifically. Was it really my teacher's age that caused the extra difficulty to learn online and use zoom? 

I'll be honest, it is not rare that I feel digitally illiterate even though I grew up with technology. It feels like I should be, but I'm definitely not a pro at navigating programs like excel or websites and social media apps. Reading Kirschner's article made me feel a little better about my lack of technological skills. Kirschner dove into Presnky's claims and took on the role of myth buster in his research. Kirschner concluded that no one is really a "digital native," younger generations simply experience a more digitally connected world. We are no more capable of navigating the everchanging technology than someone from an older generation is.