Prompt: What do you make of the (divergent) positions of Boyd and Prensky (per our discussion in class and/or per the article above?) Where do you stand on the “digital native” terminology?
When we were in class and Dr. Bogad presented the idea of a Digital Native and Digital Immigrant, it made complete sense and I easily identified myself as a Digital Native for the second required post on this blog. After reading chapter 7 of Boyd’s It’s Complicated and skimmed parts of Prensky’s Digital Native, Digital Immigrants, I feel more caught in the middle than I did in class. I can see where Prensky is coming from: those of us born in a certain window of time grew up with much more digital technology than those that came before us. We know how to use these technologies from a very young age and much of what we know about one device can transfer to the latest of devices. Perhaps we are “Digital Natives” in the physical manipulation of technology. However, just as native English speakers should be familiar with the workings of the English language (morphology, semantics, syntax, phonology, pragmatics, the history of the English language), so should we be familiar with the technology we use. As I wrote above, and as Boyd states throughout chapter 7, we know how to use the devices and navigate them, but not necessarily think about the factors at play: how apps work, which sites are “reputable” and what makes them so, how a Google search works and these are essential if we are to be effective, participating citizens in a digital world. Boyd (2014) writes “most people have little training in being critical of the content that they consume” (p. 181). This couldn’t be more true! As I was reading his description of the “Discussion” section of Wikipedia, I immediately accepted it as fact. Until I started writing this post. I just had to pause my writing for 5 minutes to VERIFY that what he wrote was true about the debate between "insurgents" and "patriots". I couldn’t, in good faith, continuing writing without doing what he is saying we don’t do enough of!
I am now not so sure we should be using the term “Digital Native” the way Prensky has proposed we use it. As Boyd says, there are “dangerous” implications if we use the term “Digital Native” without discretion (p. 197). The term does not account for the spectrum of abilities, access and privileges that every Net Gen person possesses and assumes that every Net Gen person’s experience with technology has been identical. It also leads to assumptions that a Net Gen is able to think critically about the technology they are using, when this is not the case. We, as teachers, cannot assume that this ability comes naturally to our students and need to push for more media literacy courses so that they are not passively accepting what they see on their screens but rather critique and analyze for themselves.
References
Boyd, D. (2014). It’s complicated: The social lives of networked teens. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the horizon, vol 9 (5). p. 1-6.
It's funny, even as an adult and teacher, I can sometimes feel inept in the digital technology age. I find sometimes I think I know all about some form of technology but then when it doesn't work or something "goes wrong" I feel overwhelmed and frustrated as my students may also feel the same way. Even something as simple as setting up a twitter account, which was easy, can become frustrating as it has a whole new language and a new way to navigate and post. This is what keeps me from snapchat, instagram, and the many other forms of social media.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that I found most striking from your blog is the last sentence. I think many of us take for granted what our students know and can do when it comes to digital media. The ability for a student to critique and analyze is something I think we need to start at a younger age and continue throughout the students whole career ways to include digital media.