Here's a fascinating article by Marc Prensky who discusses the challenges faced by college faculty who are "digital immigrants," having learned technology slowly and sometimes painfully...versus our students who are "digital natives" that grew up with email, cell phones, Internet access, computer games, etc. As he notes, our students' thinking patterns are different because of this life-long exposure to technology and we need to rethink how we teach them.
You can download the article here: Download Digital immigrants
Both my experience with 18-year-old all-thumbs-on-keyboard students and Siva Vaidhyanathan (and others) have persuaded me that most chatter about Digital Natives is a myth. Some students fit the digital-natives stereotype, but so do a few 60-year-olds I know.
Posted by: Sherman Dorn | November 24, 2009 at 12:55 PM
I think the difference for those of us who are "older" is that we did not grow up with most of the technology available today-PCs, Internet, text messaging, etc. and thus, like immigrants, have to "learn the language" that our students are more familiar with. On the other hand, some social networking sites such as Twitter are new to all. Thanks for commenting!
Posted by: Dr. Delaney Kirk | November 26, 2009 at 12:55 PM