Wrong Question
The task was to get my students to write an essay about how technology has changed their lives. When I posed the question, they stared at me with blank looks. So being the good teacher that I am, I rephrased the question. “So what can you do in school now using the Internet and the laptops that you couldn’t do before?”
Still dumb looks. They were trying to get what I was saying but their understanding was a blank slate
Then it dawned on me. There was no “before” in their lives. They had always had Internet and computers and communication and information at their fingertips in an instant! I was asking a question based on my mature life perspective. What I was really doing was trying to get them to articulate for me how learning has changed but not for them, FOR ME!
“What is different now?” is a ridiculous question to ask them. Caught in a memory time warp here, my students have no idea about the world without computers. Only adults who are 30 and up have this memory. Hence the term Digital Divide. We are on one side and they are on the other. That’s right. Picture the Grand Canyon. That’s how far apart we are.
According to Marc Prensky there are Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Today’s students are fundamentally different than we were at their age because of their experiences. They grew up in an environment where books and magazines counted far less than digital information and gaming. Today’s college grads have spent only 5,000 hours of their lives reading but 10,000 hours playing digital games. They have spent 20,000 hours watching TV! Their brains are fundamentally different. Their world is different.
In an article that appeared in On the Horizon in 2001, Prensky goes on to explain that Digital Immigrants learn to adapt to their environment, the language, the customs, but always maintain an accent and carry with them the thinking patterns of the old world. They had one foot in one world – the world of their maturation, and another in the new world – the way it is today.
This Digital Divide is similar to the ideas and thinking before and after the Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, things were possible that were not even dreamed of just a few years ago. That is happening today in Education and our world in general.
Are you a Digital Immigrant? Take the quiz that I developed based on Prensky’s ideas.
- Do you look for answers in books first rather than digital media?
- Do you read the manual first or assume that you will receive information as you go?
- Do you print out a document to edit it? (Do you print out your email at all?)
- Do you bring people to your computer to view something of interest rather than send them the URL?
- Do you phone people to ask did you get my email?
- Do you consult a paper Atlas or map to plan a trip?
- Do you purchase cars by driving to the dealership and kicking the tires, literally?
- Do you bank by walking into a building a talking to a teller?
- Do you look things up in the phone book?
- Where do you keep the most recent photos you have taken?
- Did you memorize your friends phone numbers? (or are they tucked away in your cell phone directory?)
- Do you write notes and use the US Postal system and not text message?
- Do you call and leave messages and not instant message?
- Do sell things at a yard sale or online?
- Do you read the paper or circulars for good deals or shop on-line?
- Do you listen to music off your CD Player?
- Do you listen to commercial FM or AM stations?
- Do you get your news from a TV network?
- As you are reading this are you holding paper? (gotcha!)
- Do you just despise these questions?
The quiz turns up patterns to ponder: digital thinking – is yours native or immigrant? A digital native has a whole different way to exist in the world and that changes everything. We used to call it the Generation Gap but the Digital Divide is more of a learning/approach thing and less of an aging/generational thing. There is so much to learn and so much we know: anything is possible.
