Crossing The Rubicon

We have crossed the Rubicon so to speak in the field of education, more importantly with who we are teaching. With the advent of the internet, digital content available to anyone anywhere in the world gives students the ability or disability depending on how you look at it, the capacity to send and receive information as fast as a click of the mouse. The sheer rapidness of the digital arena has helped hastily evolve the brain and thinking patterns of people who have known no other world than that which presently exists. (Prensky, 2008) refers to these young people as “Digital Natives” and the rest of us which knew of a world that existed without Wi-Fi “Digital Immigrants”. I would be considered a digital immigrant. I was a young kid when the internet and computers became a way of life in the mid 1990’s and I am grateful that I was able to grow up in a world where children still rode their bikes, dialed a home phone to speak with their friends and drank water out of the garden hose. I am also mindful of and can appreciate all the wonderful luxuries and comforts the digital age has brought us. I think it is important for us to be able to look at this and laugh, but on a more serious note with regards to instruction we must be willing and able to speak the new language our students are speaking. We must be able to evolve with and create new learning environments as well as content that is readily accessible and information and optionally rich for our learners. This can mean creating games that help assist instruction and retainment of pertinent information. There are several viable options to complete this, but one thing is clear to this author, change will come, us digital immigrants must be willing and able to change with it or learners will suffer from lack of evolution.  

References

Prensky, M. (2008). Digital natives, digital immigrants [PDF]. Retrieved May 27, 2023, from https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf.