I am a digital immigrant. I am functionally literate in the digital world, using email fluently, banking online, successfully completing online college courses, subscribing to vlogs on Youtube, and keeping in touch with friends through social media, but I prefer the 3-D world and my “digital immigrant accent” (“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, 2001, p. 2) is apparent. I printed out the syllabus for this class. I wrote down the assignments on a piece of paper. I don’t engage with reading on a screen as well as I do with reading I can touch. And though I see there are tons of interesting websites and podcasts and blogs and god knows what else online, I spend a pretty small amount of time accessing them. I missed the digital revolution by a few years. I remember rotary telephones. I remember the rise of FM radio. I remember film strips and audiotapes, and a time when video cassette recordings were cutting edge technology. So, though my daughters are immersed in the digital culture, to me it still feels like a novelty, a passing fad, a footnote to the real world of face-to-face, hard-copy existence.
I graduated from high school in 1986. There were six people in the extracurricular computer club, and I wasn’t one of them. Most of the students in my school took typing classes when they wanted vocational credits, and the computer class that was offered was an oddity that most didn’t make use of. We did our research in encyclopedias and at the library. We wrote our papers long-hand or painstakingly typed them out if we were going for the gold. I had no idea that our weird little computer lab was the beginning of a revolution and that computer technology would improve so drastically in just a few short years. In 1986, according to my yearbook, “ the newest development in the [computer] club, which had everyone on their ears, was being able to communicate with other computers”. And look where we are now.
I consider myself fortunate to have had a husband who likes electronic toys and who taught me how to use a computer. I went back to get my BA in 2005 and my knowledge was strong enough that I could pretty much figure out how to do research, access data bases, construct word documents, and do good quality class work. I’ve met other adults who are not so lucky. Some of them struggle and sweat to do the most basic of digital tasks, and others fight the technology, even when it’s been made clear that embracing it is an expectation in their workplace. My generation does pretty well in the digital world, but someone only ten or fifteen years older than me might find themselves regularly stymied by a world that is moving too fast for them. Of course digital technology has improved my learning experience immensely, giving me instant access to a wealth of information, but for many, it´s more a source of frustration than enlightenment.
Marc Pensky’s articles make good points about the digital environment that is shaping the brains of our youth, but I feel like there’s an alarmist bent to his arguments, an all-or-nothing declaration that insists these students are incapable of learning in any way that has nothing to do with electronics. He expresses this belief strongly in his article “Do They Really Think Differently?”, writing:
Digital natives accustomed to the twitch-speed, multi-tasking, random-access,
graphics-first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of their
video games, MTV, and Internet are bored by most of today’s education, well
meaning as it might be. But worse, the many skills that new technologies have
actually enhanced (e.g., parallel processing, graphics awareness, and random
access)--which have profound implications for their learning—are almost totally
ignored by educators. (2001, p. 5)
Pensky is so insistent in his beliefs that digital technology is the only way to reach this generation of students, that I find my suspicions aroused. As the creator of interactive, digital learning games, isn’t there a conflict of interest for him? Wouldn’t we be wary if the Nike corporation came out with a study showing that the Nike brand of athletic shoes were the only ones to fully serve the athlete’s needs? And would teachers be fully serving their students if they threw out the old ways of teaching and went wholly digital? The workplaces of our world require human interaction. The families of our future require real-time interfaces and the kind of extended contact that builds intimacy. I plan on incorporating technology into my teaching strategies, and I look forward to learning innovative ways to do so, but I would feel more comfortable about Pensky’s point of view if he were an advocate of balance between the old ways and the new. As it is, his feverish insistence that we are feeding our students knowledge that is “for the most part, stale, bland, and almost entirely stuff from the past” (“Engage Me or Enrage Me”, 2005, p. 62) feels unnecessarily incendiary to me, creating divisions instead of connections, and engendering guilt in those who still subscribe to the old school rather than offering them a way to integrate the new school.
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