Digital Natives: Ten Years After by

Apostolos Koutropoulos

EDUC-9701-Reading Discussion (Week-7)30 April 2013

Bhavani Natarajan

Key Points of this presentation

Coining of the term Digital Natives

Prensky’s Digital Native Canon

Addenda and Extensions to the Canon

Straight from the Digital Natives

Demographics Matter

Access to, Utilization, and Quality of Engagement

Personal Technology and the Leap to Educational Technology

Locus of Control

Coining of the term Digital Natives

Lots of articles were written about the digital natives since the coining of the term ten years ago. These writings were considered as common sense and have been repeated many times in many educational contexts. Other common terms, net-generation(Oblinger, Oblinger & Tapscott, as cited in Kouropoulos, 2011, p. 525) and Millenials (Strauss & Howe, 2000 as cited in Kouropoulos, 2011, p. 525) are used to describe this same generation of students.

The term “digital native” was coined by Prensky (2001a, p. 1) in his early writings ten years ago. In his recent writings he acknowledges the fact that “by virtue of being born in the digital age, our students are digital natives by definition, but that doesn’t mean that they were ever taught everything (or anything, in some cases) about computers or other technologies, or that all of them learned on their own” (Prensky, 2010, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).

Prensky’s digital native canon

In the first article on digital natives Prensky (2001a, p. 1) wrote about a singularity, an event that fundamentally changed things. It stated that the current educational system is ill prepared for this new generation of learner.

This argument is supported by facts and figures, such as students spend less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games, 20,000 hours watching television. And also provided similar statistics about Instant messages (IMs) sent, use of(digital) cellphones and email sent. This statistics was supported by other digital native author’s writings, regardless of socioeconomic background and country of origin of the digital natives.

Prensky’s digital native canon

Prensky (2001b)stated that digital natives prefer images over text, games over “serious work,” and function best when networked. These digital natives have skills, with digital technologies. Transferring their skills to academic context, both the digital natives and digital immigrants can’t pay attention and finally become doodled, dazed and day dream when they are bored.

Prensky (2001b) argues that in a technology-infused environment the brain will adapt to use the tools that are available in that setting. However digital natives should also exploit the physical ability, to learn to function in environments that don’t have the necessary tools. Moreover the technology use among the digital native population did not consider pedagogy, what is good for learners but change for the sake of changing; or the technological equivalent of “throwing money at the educational problem”.

Addenda and Extensions to the Canon

Using the Google search engine does not mean that students possess the critical literacy and information literacy required to find which results are quality search results (Oblinger, 2005).

Digital natives are “Nintendo over logic,” which states that this generation doesn’t read manuals and prefers a trial and error approach, as one might find in a video game (Frand, 2000, p. 17). These traits are inherent in humans as a whole, and everything else is just a tool to utilise.

Another trait ascribed to digital natives is that they are multitaskers, moreover they are efficient at it, and it is technology that encourages this multitasking (Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 527).

Straight from the Digital Natives

Technology means “Reformatting my computer system and installing cutting-edge software that allows me to do what I want, when I want, without restrictions, viruses, and the rules of Bill Gates, ” and “The ability to adapt and configure an already established program to [something that] benefits me daily.” (Roberts, 2005, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 528).

Digital natives are described as striving “to stay ahead of the technology curve in ways that often exhaust older generations,” and to achieve this they “rarely pick up the instruction pack to learn programming or a technique. Instead, spurred by our youthful exploration of the Internet, we tend to learn things ourselves, to experiment with new technology until we get it right, and to build by touch rather than tutorial” (Windham, 2005, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 528).

Demographics Matter

There are many variables that creates the stereotypical digital native. Location and socioeconomic status is important. How much one uses a certain tool or technologies, and what for they use it are necessary factors; and how well these skills and behaviours are transferred over into educational domains is important (Koutropoulos, 2011, pp. 528-529).

Socioeconomic factors, as well as other factors such as race, gender and educational background play an important role in how and how much people use technology (Broos & Roe, 2006, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 529).

Access to Utilization and Quality of Engagement

Having a generation “bathed in bits”, (Tapscott, 1999, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 529) access and utilisation of technology in both quality and quantity matters, when the technological engagement of these digital natives are measured.

In Australia a study showed that only 15% of the digital natives were “power users” and 45% were rudimentary technology users (Kennedy et al., 2010, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 530).

Considering the claims of digital native evangelists at face value, one might think that all of them are power users; that they are indeed media producers, who collaborate often with great skill. However statistics from a variety of studies show a different picture; the fact is that the average “digital native” entering college is not technologically sophisticated to become a power user.

Personal Technology and the Leap to Educational Technology

Two factors have to be considered even when technology is used for personal use.

First is to examine student motivations and perceptions as to what constitutes instruction. Student’s perceptions of education were fairly traditional. They prefer to be lead by a subject matter expert. So technology isn’t necessarily ruled out, however it needs to be tied into the subject of the class (Lohnes & Kinzer, 2007, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 530).

The second factor is the perception of the space: is it a private space or a public space? Students are reluctant to mix their private sphere, exemplified by the use of services like facebook and instant messaging, with the classroom sphere. Thus “Collaboration and collaborative learning did not seem to be a strong feature of the students’ experience at university and the kinds of social networking that was done was mainly informal and largely unrelated to formal learning” (Jones & Romanau, 2009, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 530).

Locus of Control

Quantitative studies show that students have the skills that they need, however qualitative data contradicts the quantitative data. Students only have very basic office suite skills. Puzzled by technology, some are afraid to experiment fearing that they will break the computer (Kvavik, 2005 as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).

The non-digital native older students have more proficiency in technology. Access to computers, time, and lack of confidence has an effect on computer literacy (Eynon, 2010, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).

Educators and parents have a tacit expectation that kids will engage spontaneously, with schooled interests on computers. If computer access and behaviours are controlled externally (Kerwalla & Crook, 2002, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531) it will limit the learning of learners.

Discussion

Group A: How does the Nintendo game help in identifying the directions and intense contradictory data?

Group B: How can the digital natives break the computer without physical damage?

Group C: What strategies could be used to collaborate the digital natives and the digital immigrants?

To the class: What are the impacts of being power users for students of the digital native generation?

Conclusion

In the past ten years, lots of articles have been written by many authors about how to reach out and how to teach these so-called digital natives.

Teachers have to focus on proper pedagogy. Especially in exposing students to information retrieval and critical information analysis skills, both in the digital and the analog realms. Teach students to change their approach of learning, instead of assuming that they possess “Nintendo over logic” concept, which enables them to modify their learning plans when things are not working out (Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 532).

References

Frand, J. L. (2000). The information-age mindset. Educause Review, 35(5), 14-24. Retrieved April 15,2013 from http://net.educause.edu/apps/er/erm00/articles005/erm0051.pdf

Koutropoulos, A. (2011). Digital Natives: Ten Years After. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(4), 525-538.

Oblinger, D. G. (2005). Learners, Learning & Technology: The Educause Learning Initiative. Educause Review, 40(5), 66-75. Retrieved April 17, 2013, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0554.pdf

Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital natives, Digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon, 9(6). Retrieved April 15, 2013, from

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20- %20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf