A little bit of humour!

This joke epitomizes our reality nowadays.

Here is an anecdote: the other day, I was with my little neighbour and she asked me to use my computer. I said "Yes" and I thought that she would need my help, so I said "Come with me that I'll teach you how to use it". But this 5-years old girl told me: "No, Belén, I can do it myself. I know how to use a computer, it's very easy!" I couldn't believe she would be able to use it alone, but I let her try it. At the end, SHE taught me how to play!!! She was able to open web pages without any problems. 

If Prensky heard this conversation, he would say that my little neighbour is a  Digital Native, and I am a Digital Immigrant. He introduces these two concepts to make reference to the existing difference between young people and adults in this new Digital Age. 

Being a Digital Native means being able to "speak the digital language of computers, video games, and Internet." (Prensky, 2001). In other words, a Digital Native is a person who has grown up and lived all his life surrounded by technology. According to the author, these are the students nowadays; the ones that having all this knowledge and being multi-task get bored in the lesson with its old methods and contents.

On the other hand, the concept of Digital Immigrant refers to those people who know almost nothing about technology because they have lived in the previous age, before the Digital Technology Age took place. It is really difficult for these people to work with computers, Internet, videos, and the like.

Prensky says that teachers are Digital Immigrants, and here is where the problem appears. Teaching becomes a hard task when it is done the 'old way' with students that ask for new and up-to-date things. However, it is a matter of attitude. If you want to change your way of teaching, to make it modern and appealing to current students, you just have to study and investigate to find ways to do it. Prensky can help you; in this paper - which I have already mentioned and tagged in a previous post - you will see some methods really useful to start implementing technology in your classroom.