Our students have been born into a digital world. They have never even known a world without the internet. Many of them have (and frequently get caught with in class) smartphones and can zoom around their apps with ease. However, are our students digital natives or digital immigrants? This tends to be the assumption with this age group, but is it the case with our students in particular?
The theory of digital natives vs. digital immigrants was first proposed by Marc Prensky in his essay “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” in 2001 and it is still a relevant concept today. In this essay, Prensky’s argument forms around this concept: “Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” This is incredibly true. Today’s students are nothing like the students we were or the students who came before us. They are part of the instant-gratification world where everything is available at the click of a button (or now the press of a button on a screen). According to Prensky, “Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).” This is an accurate description of our kids, who would rather play Minecraft on their phones than sit in our classes and listen or wait for the movie to come out than actually read a book!
I would argue that although our students really enjoy technology, most of them are not natives to the digital world. They don’t know how to safely search the internet. They have difficulty navigating new websites and resources. For most of them, their smartphone is the only way for them to access the internet because their parents do not have access at home, let alone own a computer. Several of our students don’t have the privilege of the smartphone either. Our students are even less experienced with technology than we are, as this year is the first time they have been required to use it for educational purposes. Most of our kids can navigate an app, but this does not make them digital natives. However, this does not necessarily make them digital immigrants either, as they possess many of the characteristics of digital natives and digital immigrants described by Prensky in his essay.
Whether we wish to characterize our students as digital natives or digital immigrants is not really the important issue. The issue is this: How do we facilitate digital wisdom in our students regardless of their starting point? The main key in facilitating digital wisdom in students of any age or technological skill is to keep our students in mind. What do our students need to be able to learn and understand the material we need to teach them? The best way to find out is to ask them! Even though our students are quite young, they have educational needs and opinions about how best to fill those needs. No, not every student will be able to give us an intelligent (or even a serious) answer, but if we take the time to talk to them, we can find out some really incredible things. The best way to teach a concept might not always be the most technological way.
Another important way to facilitate digital wisdom is to think about the skills that our students will actually need in their futures. Is it really important that they know the names of the different types of figurative language? Do they need to understand the vocabulary of the parts of a sentence? The answer is probably no. However, do they need to understand the difference between literal language and figurative language and when it is appropriate to use each? Do they need to know how to put together a complete sentence with an intelligent thought? These questions will give you very different answers.
If we can focus on only the most important things when we are designing and teaching, we can help our students to make huge leaps, not only with technology, but also in our content area. We must always stop to ask ourselves these questions: What do our students really need to know? and What would be the best way to transmit that information? We need to accept that the digital route is not always the best route, and sometimes taking the best route will require us to address our own digital accents to help our students begin to navigate this digital world that will not be going away.
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