My feedback post:
My Rewrite of my first reflection:
Are Digital Natives a Myth or Reality?
Full Transcript of Final Reflection
The driving question explores the key debate of whether ‘Digital natives’ and ‘Digital immigrants’ exist in society. Within Prenky’s (2001) article, the central topic is that ‘Digital natives’, as in those that are born after 1984, process information in a way that is radically different to that of‘’Digital Immigrants’, those born before 1984.
Without reading any further than this article, my opinion is that ‘Digital natives’ seem plausible to exist. Prensky (2001), suggests that the “rapid dissemination of digital technology” (Prensky, 2001, p. 1) has increased the frequency of interaction students have with technology. Consequently, they are able to understand it more fluently, leading them to “ process information fundamentally different from their predecessors”. In Prensky’s article, he establishes that it is “likely that they [students thinking patterns] have physically changed” (Prensky, 2001, p. 3).
In the absence of empirical evidence, Prensky’s (2001) article proposes a fundamental change in how students born after 1984 “parallel process and multi-task” (Prensky, 2001, p. 3), and insists that the educational system, and the ‘Digital Immigrants’ that teach them, should adopt a new approach, to support this new generation.
After my initial reading of this article, I did not question my own views on the existence of ‘Digital natives’. However, the conclusions made by Kirshner and Bruyckere (2017) object to the claims that ‘Digital natives’ are fundamentally different to that of ‘Digital immigrants’. They use empirical evidence to show that biologically, “multitasking and parallel processing” (Prensky, 2001, p. 3) is not an ability that a certain generation has acquired from technology.
This opposing argument directly influenced my view, making me recognise that Prenky’s lack of evidence and additional resources hinders his argument. At the centre of Prensky’s arguments, he states that ‘Digital natives’ are better equipped with multitasking skills. Kirshner and Bruyckere (2017) dispute this theory by stating that the experiments completed by Gladstones, Regan, and Lee (1989), showcased that cognitively speaking, humans are better at completing one task at a time (Kirshner & Brukchere, 2017). Kirshner focuses on the flaws in Prenky’s article and strongly disputes the possibility of a biological shift, and it becomes apparent to me that Prenky’s (2001) reasoning has strong weaknesses.
Prensky’s (2001) article claims that defining a ‘Digital native’ is based on a birth date of before, or after, 1984 (Prensky, 2001). Helsper and Eynon (2013) question the validity of Prensky's when he ascertains that a ‘Digital native’ is predetermined by the volume of their interaction with technology (Prensky, 2001). Helsper and Eynon (2013) concur that if being technologically intelligent is correlated with interaction, then anyone can eventually become a ‘Digital native’ with experience, and it is not determined solely by age.
Within my own experience as a ‘Digital native’, I do sense a cultural shift on the way my generation uses the internet. Although, as supported by Margary, Littlejohn and Vojt (2010), this shift is not necessarily a more in depth understanding of technology, but "quantitatively rather than qualitatively different” (Margary et. al., 2010).
I do not agree on aspects of a complete biological shift, or a definite age where one becomes a ‘Digital native’, however, I understand that interaction with technology has changed and will continue to change. As a future teacher, my teaching strategies would include aspects from my ‘Digital native’ understanding of technology, including reflective, collaborative, and digital formatting that supports a new “technological landscape” (Prensky, 2001, p.1). The workforce will have advanced even more when I am a teacher and I will provide resources that challenge young students, while also learning from them.
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