Don't Fence Me In...

I agree with certain components of Prensky's article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants but there are also some ideas that Prensky misses out on. One of the first things I agree with was the idea that our current educational system does not meet the needs of the students who are in our classroom. In general, these students have a significant amount of access to technology in their daily lives and have grown up surrounded by technology. The current education system doesn't seem to compete with these tech wonders and for lack of better terms, it makes school boring. I also agree that instructors need to find a way to reach the students in a way that connects with them and not in the outdated language of an immigrant.

My disconnect with Prensky's idea is that the students are generally only consumers of digital media (watching videos, playing games, etc.) and they aren't active users of the technology in ways that will help them be successful. Teaching students to use technology as an academic tool is key in the process. In an earlier course I took, we discussed the use of game-based learning and one concern that I had with creating a video game for learning is that on my own I can't create something that can compete with what they play on their PS4 or XBOX One at home. It ends up looking like something a digital immigrant created and that a digital native will laugh at. One other issue I have with Prensky's article was that not all of my students are natives and not all of them speak that language. I have a number of students every year who have few (if any) tech skills and little understanding of the digital language (more on this with Wheeler).

In the McKenzie article, he takes issue with a number of Prensky's ideas and his comparison of Prensky to the early American nativists is an excellent analogy. McKenzie focuses on picking apart Prensky and shows a number of issues with the article as it is written. The Reeves article focused on categorizing based on popular social/cultural labels. There are a number of interesting tables of characteristics, but it focuses on generational characteristics to categorize people. I'm not totally comfortable with this approach and it seems more about generalizing people based on their age than any significant learning component.

The last item I read this week was the Wheeler blog post, which spoke about the importance of recognizing the individual in learning. This is something I attempt to practice as much as possible in my classroom. Each student in an individual and has needs that won't be met by a cookie-cutter approach, even if it's through the lens of corraling students into learning styles. Creating meaningful relationships with your students and checking in with them over the course of the year will yield much more fruit than assuming that you're hitting the needs of the student with a one size fits most approach. His ideas also counter some of Reeves ideas about placing individuals into categories based on characteristics. I think focusing on the student and their learning needs at that time will give the best opportunity for meaningful learning.