The Digital Student

This week on Teach Online we are looking at areas relating to Cloud, Collaboration and Connectivity. As part of that we're looking at the Digital Student. As I was putting this section together I thought it'd be a good idea to write a blog post as a summary of some of the main arguments/ viewpoints around Prensky's idea of 'digital natives V's digital immigrants' for those who maybe new to the notion.


Prensky (2001) states that times have changed so rapidly that we are no longer teaching the students that we were designed to teach, this is due to the rapid growth of digital technologies in the 20th century. He refers to young students as native speakers of the digital language, coining them 'digital natives' and those that have not been brought up using technology and computers daily, namely our educators, he refers to as 'digital immigrants'. Prensky's classification has been subject some criticism, some have disagreed with his analogy of young students being natives and teachers being immigrants due to the classifications seeming to rigid based on age. Is that what our students think? Are we really dealing with digital natives and are our academic staff the digital immigrants? 


Whilst Prensky makes some interesting points, some have not agreed with his thinking, Bennet et al (2008) and similarly, Margaryan and Littlejohn (2008) all believe that not all of our students are as 'digitally speaking' as Prensky suggests. And such generalisations cannot be applied to all.


White and Le Cornu (2011) offer an alternative to Prensky's classification of native and immigrant, and offer a different metaphor centered on the uptake of social media. This metaphor is based on 'place' referring to the social dimensions and spaces in which people meet and hold common ground, and 'tool' which can be used a as metaphor of how and why people use technology. This leads them to the alternative classification of 'resident and visitor'. Visitors are more functional, they turn to the web solely to in order to carry out a task. Resident's on the other hand are heavy users of social media, they are comfortable in communicating online, blogging, shopping online and expressing themselves as part of a community in a virtual place. Others such as Helpser and Eynon (2010) align with White and Le Cornu's view that it is not a simple case of generational gap defining the gap between teacher and student. 




Working within the field of educational technology I can relate to Prensky's view. However from personal experience in supporting academic staff and in particular during the current economic climate I have seen a growing number of what White and Le Cornu have coined as 'visitors' seeking advice in utilising technology in their teaching. As White and Le Cornu have set out, these visitors arrive with a specific task in mind and often hold fears that the 'residents' or 'natives' are ahead of the game in terms of both technical skills and knowledge. For example, a member of staff coming to me with a specific teaching problem that they would lie to improve using technology. 
  

This year we are asking our SALT team (Student Ambassadors for Learning and Teaching) to talk to students about the use of technology in their teaching. Although there will be a focus on mobile, it'll be interesting to see what kind of information they gather from students in our faculty and in particular we may well uncover indicators as to whether or not this notion of ‘digital native’ exists or if students feel the need for additional support in utilising tools and technologies.

References 

BENNET, S., MATON, .K and KERVIN, L. (2008) The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology. Volume 39 (5) pp775–786.

HELSPER, .E., & EYNON, .R. (2010) Digital natives: Where is the evidence? British Educational Research Journal. Volume 36(3) pp503–520. Available from:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/communia2010/sites/communia2010/images/Helsper_Enyon_Digital_Natives.pdf 

MARGARYAN, .A. & LITTLEJOHN, A. (2008) Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning. Available from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.172.7940&rep=rep1&type=pdf 

PRENSKY, M (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, On the Horizon. Volume 9(5). MCB University Press. Available at: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf

WHITE, D., & LE CORNU, A. (2011) Visitors and residents: Towards a new typology for online engagement. First Monday 16(9). Available from: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3171/3049