Digital Revolution: Technology Friend or Foe?

Talking Points #3

“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” By Marc Prensky


In this article Prensky explores the idea of new technology taking over the lives of people today. More and more we are finding technology being integrated in our everyday lives and even in the classroom. Prensky believes this digital revolution is taking over as a new methodology of teaching and could possibly be changing the brain development of children today, “what should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N- [for Net] – gen or D- [for digital] – gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet” (Prensky, 1).

Some things I found to be confusing were Prensky’s thoughts of “singularity is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century” (Prensky, 1). I believe he is talking about the major changes of youth today. In sentences surrounding this quote he focuses on the unique ways in which youth talk, communicate, learn and dress which have all changed in today’s day and age. He might be speaking about how this digital age will continue to take over and can never be reversed because the mindset of the youth today has changed so drastically.

Another point that I found to be confusing was his discussion of the CAD’s “Monkey Wrench game” and how the creators wanted the language “to be traditional pedagogical language of learning objective and their goal of the game was to eliminate any language that even smacked education” ( Prensky, 5). Was this game supposed to be relevant to education in any way?

Overall, I feel that Prensky makes a great argument about the new waves of integration of technology and the surge of controversy that has followed. People are questioning its impact of how society thinks, acts and feels today. He makes a good argument about lay people and the changes they will need to make from generations past ways of thinking to today, “today’s older folk were “socialized” differently from their kids, and are now in the process of learning a new language. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain” ( Prensky, 2).

Prensky allows the reader to question whether technology is teaching or taunting our society. Will our communication styles as a community begin to dwindle due to texting and email? Prensky states “so what should happen? Should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital immigrant educators learn the new?...Kids born into any new culture learn the new language easily, and forcefully resist the old” (Prensky, 3). Going along with this idea he mentions “our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language” (Prensky,2).

Will technology take over the youth of our nation? Will kids really benefit from faster paced curriculum? Should teachers change their system or stick to methodologies of teaching that were created long before this digital revolution? Prensky asks the reader to question if they think our society should revert back to old ways of teaching or conform to the mainstream society? Prensky even remarks that some parents today seek computer help from their kids.

Prensky also points to “legacy” and “future” types of teaching and learning “my own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content” (Prensky, 4). Should a game teach a child about serious topics like 9/11?

I don’t agree with his ideas of using games to compensate for a teacher teaching students. But he raises a valid point that if students can memorize game characters why can’t they learn content for class, “there is no reason that a generation that can memorize over 100 Pokemon characters with all their characters, history and evolution can’t learn the names, populations, capitals and relationships of all the 181 nations in the world. It just depends on how it is presented” (Prensky, 5). Prensky remarks that if this change were to occur, “digital immigrant educations will have to change” (Prensky, 6).

I believe that technology is taking over not only in the classroom but the way we think, act, learn and communicate with others. Are we properly socializing our youth? Is it changing our society for the better or worst? This article connects to the theme of the image of teens in the media. Prensky like Hine and Christensen note the image of teens changing, and how they speak ‘their new own language.’ As teens are targeted in the media as being the major consumers of technology, Prensky is asking us if we think should society conform to the youth’s new ways.