What do you make of the (divergent) positions of Spiegel and Prensky? What do you hear each of them saying about who youth are? Where do you stand on the “digital native” terminology?
Prensky started an important conversation with his work understanding youth and technology, but I think that later scholars' contributions, like Spiegel, clarify his beginnings. First, Prensky's nomenclature of "digital native" and "digital immigrant" is not necessarily apt. Assuming peoples' skills and interests based on when they were born is a fundamentally incorrect evaluation of them and misses the point. Spiegel argues that there are a variety of learners, young and old, whose online interactions are varied and may actually require different names as a result. She offers other scholars' contributions like "digital gamer" and "digital creator," and her own "digital socialites" to explain the reasons in which people use the Internet. Each sphere is predicated on a different set of motivations and skills insofar as a "digital gamer" is interacting entirely differently than a "digital socialite," who is using the online space primarily to communicate. To follow Prensky's thinking and assume that all young people are "digital natives," or people who are entirely comfortable and adept with the online sphere is thus incorrect. Especially in the context of schools. If students are gaming, creating content, and/or communicating via online platforms with friends, they might not automatically know how to use the digital space in a way that is conducive to school. Their age does not automatically mean that they know every facet of the digital space. The terminology "digital native" implies this, therefore I disagree with it and follow Spiegel's thinking more. I think that Prensky's view of youth is narrow and not inclusive of a variety of learners from a variety of backgrounds, whereas Spiegel begins to consider these things. For example, some students may not have access to Internet outside of school, so becoming a "digital native" would be pretty difficult. Even further, I completely agree with Spiegel's observation that the "digital native" and "digital immigrant" conversation creates a moment in which educators "acquiesce to [students'] interests and encourage them to communicate in the only way they know how to instead of asking them to try other modes or use other platforms," (p. 13). This is not preparing students for the real world, and is only hurting them in an effort to engage them better. Spiegel offers a variety of ways to instead engage learners, that applies to each variety of young learner online. Lastly, I believe that Spiegel's terminology trumps Prensky's because of the usage of words like "native" and "immigrant." In Prensky's argument, teachers as "digital immigrants" need to assimilate to their students' world by using their language, appealing to their interests, etc. This rhetoric is harmful because it reinforces that immigrants must assimilate to the natives of that space.
Hi Helena! Thank you for the post! I love your interpretations of these phrases. You do a great job of systematically unpacking each one. I like how you highlighted that these terms make assumptions about people based on when they were born, and that naturally skill and comfort levels will vary person to person. This makes me think of the following anecdote: my daughter is in kindergarten. Over the winter there were snow days. Her school dealt with this by having distance learning. So we set up a chromebook on the kitchen table and helped her navigate Zoom. As the lesson went on, it became clear kids in her class had varying skill at using the mute button. It seemed with almost every interaction there was troubleshooting and prompting about hitting the mute button. Because there was so much prompting, I assumed my daughter needed help with this function too. She clarified for me quickly that she did not. So I left her to the lesson. This is just an example of how young folk of the same age have differing levels of skill using technology and how quickly assumptions can be made.
ReplyDeleteHelena!! First of all, I really loved your title, it was super eye-catching and I couldn't agree more with the meaning behind it. I also deeply appreciated how you dug into the connotations behind the terms "native" and "immigrant". I knew the usage didn't sit right with me, but I couldn't put into words why the actual words bothered me. You explained that so well in this post and that brought me a lot of clarity!
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