Prensky and the Digital Age...Immigrants and Natives.
My reflections about his theories and the development of a new intelligence
I have found the argument by Prensky highly thought provoking. His analogy of immigrants and natives seems a really helpful way of understanding how people are either born immersed within the culture of technology or have to try and assimilate themselves into it. For those who migrate the digital world is like a society with traditions alien and its digital jargon and processes like a second language they must learn to use but which will never be as instinctive as their own birth tongue. Alternatively the natives know nothing else and it is part of their nature, they are therefore adept at using it and can do so to its full potential. It is useful to have the comparison because from having a concept of one it makes it easier to understand the other.
Fascinatingly Prensky goes so far as to suggest that the action make up of the human mind has changed with the introduction of the digital age. He believes a kind of evolution has taken place where people have become so used to technology and certain pursuits such as fast paced computer games that the mind has been transformed. At the very least he thinks that we have adapted to use different mental processes and I can see some logic in this. Certainly an activity like playing a high speed computer game such as one of the online strategy war games e.g. Command and Conquer requires certain brain processes to be an effective player. An individual must be able to have acute reaction times, planning attacks and pre-empting the enemy assaults, also interestingly they must be able to work at a team and make a collaborative effort with people across the world who they have never met before to fight the opposing side. I find this element of networking really fascinating because it is interaction in a way previously unthought-of, where people join for a common goal without face to face communication and it is interesting how they establish pattern of working together immediately. My point is that these skills are newly experienced by a generation raised in the digital age; they are learning these abilities and ways of working from a young age whereas to older immigrants these must be extremely challenging to develop. So perhaps it does seriously train the mind to use different areas in the thought process a kind of rewiring where areas can be accessed more quickly. Perhaps people’s minds can be trained to work in certain ways and are indeed ‘malleable’ for instance a panic attack sufferer will become trained into a cycle of panic where they trigger their own attacks just as perhaps the mind of a frequent computer game player will be trained to take shortcuts and quickly access certain areas so they react almost on auto play. Interestingly Prensky relates this new programming to when people took up watching digital images on television and film and processing it as a form of expression or when written word was first introduced and they adapted to converting the images as language.
Digital Immigrants are said by Prensky to be identifiable by the way they use technology such a printing off on screen information or showing people things online in front of them rather than sending links. It seems a willingness to participate in digital technology but still with a preference for human interface and to have physical copies of things. In this way they are sort of sampling the technological world but then not using it to its potential by adapting it to their former world. The theory Prensky has is that there is a conflict between the immigrants and the natives and the extent to which they are immersed in technologies. He believes that for things to move even further forward, we need to think about how the digital natives are taught, they cannot learn through outmoded techniques which have no relevance to them and their world, because this will make education seem stagnant and outdated and not equip them with the proper skills they need. Or for another matter even allow certain children to access the curriculum who have become adept at handling technology and working with machines and devices but are inexperienced in using a pen and paper. I can strongly see where he is coming from and certainly would support the use of as much new technology as possible in the classroom as a way of really connecting with and engaging the children. A teacher needs to become as much involved in the new age as possible, trying out digital devices such as cameras and iPods and taking an interest in discovering online communities because this is part of what children bring with them into school as a conception of the world.
However I do think that obviously there needs to be a balance. Prensky speaks of many different attributes appealing to the native such as connecting with visual images over written text, wanting the feel of instant gratification through computer games, to multi task and be engaged in several acts at the same time and randomly find information on the internet rather than systematically. It may sound traditional and conservative but there are traditions surely we do still want to preserve like the joy of reading a physical book ( as opposed to the digital notebook novels) or the composition of a song on an instrument (rather than on a digital programme producer). We do not know how far technology will go and what it will be like in a century’s time, so I think it is important to have forward vision as well as glancing back to the past. What Prensky calls legacy and future content. He does indeed acknowledge that so much ‘exposure’ to technology may be at the expense of other skills and call it a ‘reprogramming process’. One disadvantage is reflection as he believes our is such a fast paced age that there are not enough opportunities for it. He also conceives that due to their experience of information at the finger tips and speed of delivery, multi tasking, and instant gratification they may find education relatively boring. However he positions the fault far more with the educators for failing to keep up with the times then the technologies for creating these mindsets.
I have found the work of Prensky a really compelling argument and one which will undoubtedly have some impact on my practice as an educator. For me the most interesting part is to recognise the skills developed through gaming or networking as skills in their own right, and the challenge would be to make the curriculum accessible to these particular learners. Perhaps in a way the digital age has created a new area of the multiple intelligences (previously defined as ...) which is a brain adept at communicating and processing information through digital technology which is intelligence in its own right. Our teaching needs to plan for this learner just as it does for the others and appreciate their skills. My view is that we should try and identify them and help our learners adapt and transfer them to other tasks. For example a child who is talented at playing strategy games and solving puzzles demonstrates logic which could be applied to mathematics or reasoning out problems in class, or one who has quick reactions on a platform game may be equally responsive and successful in a fast paced lesson with lots of rewards or have the same precision and judgement of distance when aiming for a target in PE.
Helen Balmer 20/10/08