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On stopping the use of unqualified and ridiculous terms such as ‘Digital Native’ and ‘Digital Immigrant’
The ‘visitor’ vs. ‘resident’ differentiation rings true and is based on sound research. Prensky’s original ideas of the ‘digital native’ have no foundation at all either in his own research (he did none) or even on an academic literature research. I look forward to returning to the papers, notes and discussions on this that I have in this blog – even showing how I went from naive believer to outright objector.
If you read most of Prensky’s output as I have now done you will either be horrified or laugh or cry at the absurd statements that he makes and the truly ridiculous attempts at ‘cod’ academic writing where references are, to put it bluntly, complete buncum. He will quote, as if it counts, the very words used by Spock in an episode of Star Trek … and give this as a footnote and reference as if watching the episode yourself will in anyway qualify his argument, or he will quote someone and say, ‘Mr Smith from England writing to The Times’ as if this is a recognised and accepted way to reference – there is rarely any opportunity to check the references he offers – I’ve tried often and repeatedly fail. He gained an MA from Harvard, he states, but rarely reaches the most basic academic standards in much of his writing. Take a close look at ‘Teaching Digital Natives’ – it is counterproductive and will go against anything teachers have been taught. He is rightfully accused of hyperbole and scaremongering. Because he is controversial it does spark debate. There have been too many ‘catchy phrases’ regarding eLearning. There are now many research papers, by senior, experienced academics and their teams who repeat their research with students every few years. There has never been a ‘digital native’ – they are as illusive as the yeti. Invaluable to try and define different user types when it comes to technology, but it is as complex as any grouping, tagging or labelling of people can be.
Comment from Bren
LOL! I’m currently reading Digital natives: where is the evidence? (Helsper & Eynon for E891)
I simply don’t see the younger gen as being natives. I supplied in an ICT lesson just before Christmas & found myself explaining stuff to older teenagers and at the extreme, I might just about be old enough to be their granny….. just don’t tell me how to suck eggs!
The diffusion and use of innovations is complex – like people.
Fig. 1 Who’s the digital native which one is the immigrant?
There is no evidence to support any suggestion that there was ever such a group as a ‘digital native’ and it is sensationalist claptrap or lazy journalism to talk of ‘millenials’ – there aren’t any. The research shows the complex and human reality. It is not generational. (Kennedy et al, 2009., Jones et al. 2010., Bennett and Maton., 2010) I’m not the only father who knows more and does more online than his kids – we had computers at university in the mid-1980s and in the office within a decade.
Bell and Gemmel fall for the falsehood of the ‘Millenials’. (2009. p. 19)
Fig.2. The devices we use do not split us across generations.
On digital natives or millenials add that behaviours supposedly attributable only to this younger generation are also evident in anyone using these tools and devices – the digitally literate is impatient and is easily distracted.
This applies to anyone who spends much time online. It is not age, gender or race related. We all fidget if downloads are slow or we lose a signal. We’re just being people. It is not generational. Rather behaviours with this tools reflects who we are, not what the kit affords.
Fig. 3. Whether you were born before or after this arrival doesn’t make a jot of difference.
So you here anyone calling our parents the ‘TV generation’, or the generation before that the ‘Wireless Generation’. It is shorthand that is harmless until it is used to define policy.
They refer to those born between 1982 and 2001 as a homogenous cohort, as if they are all born into families where they will have access to gadgets and later the internet as a birthright. The figures given by Bell and Gemmel (2009) stick to those in North America – just the US or Canada too? So what if a few become software millionaires. Others aren’t getting jobs at all. And there are plenty of other ways to earn a crust.
Of the 70 million they talk about how many have been interviewed?
When it comes to the use of various online tools and platforms what actually is their behaviour? Its the same behaviour they’d show out in the real world, at school or in the shopping-mall, making and losing friends. And when it comes to blogging, who knows what is going on. The authors assume (2009. p 20) that there is some kind of truth in what people post – that in my experience blogging for many hours a day since 1999 is far, far from that. Indeed finding the honest voice is the one in 30,000.
There is a considerable degree of fakery, and blatant fiction.
I am reminded of the entirely fictitious ‘Online Caroline’ of a decade ago. She posted a sophisticated blog for the era, with photos and video chat. Like Orson Wells following an audience over the invasion of earth this blog had people calling the police when Caroline’s CCTV supposedly logged someone nicking stuff from her flat.
Bell and Gemmel (2009) talk about lifelogging as a panacea.
Fig. 4. The context in which we learn
There are lessons and techniques that have their place. In fact we’re doing a lot of it already. Through several devices or one we are recording, snapping, storing, sharing, loading, compiling, curating, mixing and remembering.
Every example given is a positive, a selected moment on which to build … what about the times of heartache and memory, of parent’s arguments and childhood bullying. Do we want those? If trying a cigarette, getting drunk, being caught in the open with a dodgy stomach or vomiting?
The authors, Gordon Bell and Gemmel (2009) as well as Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (2009) consider four issues in relation to the creation of digital memories:
- Record (digitization)
- Storage (cheap)
- Recall (easy)
- Global Access (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009. p. 14)
A fifth should be how this content is managed and manipulated, how selections are made and how it is edited and fed back to the content’s owner, or how it forms another person’s memory when picked up and mashed online.
As (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009. p. 16) puts it, to cope with the sea of stimuli, our brain uses multiple levels of processing and filtering before committing information to long-term memory .
Could decluttering the hoarders house be achieved by creating for them a digital archive and putting everything else in the bin?
Human Memory
Fig. 5. How we forget. And where software and tools can play a part to help us remember – to create more memories and better recall.
We forget (perhaps an implicit result of the second law of thermodynamics). (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009. p. 21) Or a fact. A neuroscientist needs to get engaged at this stage. What IS going on in there?
Let’s say that memory formation could be liken to the aggregation of coral.
This memory has had no opportunity to fix in this way if it is a snap-shot of the an impression of a moment detached from its context – what was going in, how the person was feeling, what they thought of the events, how these would colour and shape their memory .
We are prone to mis-attribute
Language is a recently recent phenomenon (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009. p. 23) Should we therefore remember in images?
Painting dates back some 30,000 years. The written language is even more recent (6000 years ago) as pictographs became cuneiform became an alphabet – so would an oral tradition be of more value?
REFERENCE
Bell, G., and Gemmel. J (2009) Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything
Bennett, S, & Maton, K (2010), ‘Beyond the “Digital Natives” Debate: Towards a More Nuanced Understanding of Students’ Technology Experiences’,Journal Of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 5, pp. 321-331, ERIC, EBSCOhost, (viewed 13 Dec 2012).
Jones C., Ramanaua R., Cross S. & Healing G. (2010) Net generation or Digital Natives: is there a distinct new generation entering university? Computers and Education 54, 722–732.
Kennedy G., Dalgarno B., Bennett S., Gray K., Waycott J., Judd T., Bishop A., Maton K., Krause K. & Chang R. (2009) Educating the Net Generation – A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy. Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Available at: http://www.altc.edu.au/ system/files/resources/CG6-25_Melbourne_Kennedy_ Handbook_July09.pdf (last accessed 19 October 2009).
Mayer-Schönberger, V (2009) Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age
Related articles
- The idea of gathering a substantial part of one’s life experience fascinates me, as it has often inspired others (mymindbursts.com)
- The power to remember and the need to forget (mymindbursts.com)
- The memory is the mind process happening in your brain, it can never be the artefact that plays back footage of an experience. (mymindbursts.com)
- Bianca Bosker: In Defense Of Forgetting To Forget (huffingtonpost.com)
- Automatically Augmenting Lifelog Events Using Pervasively Generated Content from Millions of People (mymindbursts.com)
- Going, Going, Gone: the Where and Why of Memory Erasure (theepochtimes.com)
- Yahoo’s Mayer lifts sales for the first time in 5 years (economictimes.indiatimes.com)
- Digital Memory (hastac.org)
27 blog posts from all that I’ve posted since 1999
I’ve done an inadequate sweep of the 600+ entries here in order to select 7 entries and have it roughly down to these 27: If I do another sweep I’d find another 27 and be none the wiser. I have another blog with 16000+ entries and some 16 blogs. What interests me is what iWriter next.
I work in an Orchard Emotional intelligence means more …
Is education a problem or a business opportunity?
Grayson Perry and Rose Tremain on creativity
Fingerspitzengefuegel How where and when do you learn?
152 blogs I try to keep an eye on
E-learning is just like Chicken Masala
Life according to Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Samuel Pepys
100 novels personally recommended
12 Metaphors visualised to aid with the brilliance of blogging
Prensky and the concept of the Digital Native deserves to be lampooned
The Contents of my brain : a screenplay
We can’t help to think in metaphors it’s what makes us human
Maketh up a quote at ye beginning of thy book
Personal development planning as a thermal
What makes an e-learning forum tick?
Social Media is knowledge sharing
Making sense of the complexities of e-learning
Social Learn (Like Open Learn but networked)
Twelve books that changed the world
Some thoughts on writing by Norman Mailer
Visualisation of the nurturing nature of education according to Vygotsky
Woe betide the Geordie linguist
Does mobile learning change everything?
The Digital Scholar. Martin Weller
The pain of writing and how the pain feeds the writing too
Digital Housekeeping and the Digital Brain
My heads like a hedgehog with its paws on a Van den Graff generator
Where’s education in technical terms compared to the car?
My preference, having created an @random button for my original blog started in 1999 (and the first to do so) is to do exactly that: hit the ‘enter@random’ button 7 times and see where it takes me.
Ignore the techno-hype, nothing much has changed
In 2001 I blogged ‘what’s new about new media?’ and answered ‘not much’. At the time there was plenty of hype, as if people had caught a wave for the first time and discovered surfing forgetting that the ocean hadn’t changed and that other waves would come along.
It is contingent upon commentators, including students undertaking such an activity as this not to respond by overacting the ‘technohype.’ The kind of blind faith Prensky takes in his beliefs needs to be dealt repeated and convincing blows based on the facts, which show that nuanced differences exist within generations.’
Questioning the idea of a ‘Net Generation’ – there never was one
The Smith and Caruso (2010) ‘The ECAR study of undergraduate students and information technology, 2010’ is on objective report, a snap shot in time, professionally executed and commented upon objectively.
Kennedy’s survey (2006) ‘Questioning the net generation: a collaborative project in Australian higher education’of the same cohort of undergraduate students from three Australian Universities had an objective, a problem to solve i.e. is there any foundation for the idea of a ‘Net Generation‘, or ‘Digital Natives‘.
The third type of presentation Conole et al. (2008) ‘“Disruptive technologies”, “pedagogical innovation”: What’s new? is an easy read the style is lucid, persuasive and conversational, as you’d expect from a seasoned speaker.
Each is different and ought to be commented upon for what it purports to be.
The insight here is three fold:
- the different ways information is presented,
- how all three approaches offer valid course materials or assets
- and because of their differences will evoke and expect a correspondingly different kind of comment.
You could say that with each of these in turn presentation style, and the skills at the presentation technique increase, while the academic content becomes diluted, more fluid and conversational. When in comes to comment or critique this should be born in mind; Grainne Conole’s presentation would not warrant the kind of scrutiny you’d give a report.
The final step would be an eight minute professional video, or covering all three, drawing in further reports and interviews with the experts and students, a documentary.
Though informative, I’d consider the first and second papers to offer the most calories to a student. The choice is down to the academic team: dean, academic expert and learning designer.
Digital Native vs Digital Immigrant vs Digital Parents vs Digital Household
I’ve been taken in by and am now set against the idea of that there is a generational difference when it comes to use of technology – yes those starting university today clearly have different experiences with the kit than we/I did (I was at Oxford in 1981-84).
The computer was in a lab. My Dad had a Microwriter. By 1985 I might have had an Amstrad and a pager.
My point with this Digital Natives thing is that the term was coined without foundation. It is now being debunked. How come the academic instituions went along with it? Had this faux pas occured in the sciences propper rather than social sciences the ho-ha would have featured on the Today Programme.
Why do academics as well as journalists get taken in by the hyperbole?
Anyway, the OU research folk have been busy these last few months releasing all kinds of papers on the theme. Here are some of them.
It is has never been generational.
‘Our research suggests that we should be cautious about distinguishing a specific generation because although there are age differences there are additional factors differentiating students, specifically gender and disciplinary differences. We find significant age related differences but we are reluctant to conclude that there is a clear disconnection between a Net generation composed of Digital Natives and older students.’ ( Jones and Ramanau, 2010)
Read these for more
Jones, C and Ramanau, R (2010) The Net Generation enters university: What are the implications for technology enhanced learning? UK Open University, United Kingdom
Jones, C A new generation of learners? (2010) The Net Generation and Digital Natives
Jones. C and Healing, G (2010) Net Generation Students
Digital Parents : Neither native nor immigrant
17th March 2011
I’ve been taken in by and am now set against the idea of that there is a generational difference when it comes to use of technology – yes those starting university today clearly have different experiences with the kit than we/I did (I was at Oxford in 1981-84).
The computer was in a lab. My Dad had a Microwriter. By 1985 I might have had an Amstrad and a pager.
My point with this Digital Natives thing is that the term was coined without foundation. It is now being debunked. How come the academic institutions went along with it? Had this faux pas occurred in the sciences proper and not social sciences the ho-ha would have featured on the Today Programme.
This isn’t a red top newspaper or tittle-tattle on local radio, so why get taken in by the hyperbole.
Anyway, the OU research folk have been busy these last few months releasing all kinds of papers on the theme. Here are some of them.
It is has never been generational.
‘Our research suggests that we should be cautious about distinguishing a specific generation because although there are age differences there are added factors differentiating students, specifically gender and disciplinary differences. We find significant age related differences but we are reluctant to conclude that there is a clear disconnection between a Net generation composed of Digital Natives and older students.’ ( Jones and Ramanau, 2010)
Read these for more
Jones, C and Ramanau, R (2010)
THE NET GENERATION ENTERS UNIVERSITY: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING? UK Open University, United Kingdom
Jones, C A new generation of learners? (2010) The Net Generation and Digital Natives
Jones. C and Healing, G (2010) Net Generation Students
Debunking the myth of the digital native
An enthusiastic of Prensky a year ago and happy to buy into such labels having lived with them in advertising and marketing where extensive qualitative research labels consumers with all kinds of spurious, though fact based terms and categories to help sell products and services. However, with the concept of ‘Digital Natives’ ;’Generation Y’ et al we fall into the trap of wanting to believe we’re living through a revolution, content to listen to the hyperbole, without doing our own research or looking at that done by others, anything less is hear say, journalistic or fiction. We are not entering a ‘Brave New World’ of Alpha, Beta and Gammas.
The true picture, as we must all suspect, is far more complex than Prensky wishes us to believe and is moving faster, sometimes in unexpected ways, than a study carried out in 2006 can tell us.
Five years ago MySpace was still dominant over Facebook and whilst mobile phones are almost universal the SmartPhone was not; this alone could be realising the desires of the 2010 student undergraduate cohort to access the internet anytime, anywhere, and so to network, as well as reading and writing blogs.
Prensky made a general assumption, that this and many subsequent reports have replaced with scientific studies that show a more complex picture that debunk Prensky’s assumptions and notions.
Prensky suggests that the ‘digital native’ and corollary the ‘digital immigrant’ are universal then they are not.
He suggests that the experience of these technologies are universal, when they are not and so a cohort of students will share ‘sophisticated knowledge’ when they do not and that they will have a similar ‘understanding’ of these technologies, let alone a desire to use them for studying, when they do not.
My view is that if people acted on Prensky’s notions then too great a part of a student cohort would be disenfranchised, just as anyone would if they had an access issue. Research such as this, particularly more qualitative research carried out frequently, if not annually, given the rate of change, is required. Universities are selling something of far greater than Kellogg’s Cornflakes or Walnut Whips, so ought to apply some of the levels of research done by advertisers.
The authors’ conclusion regarding Prensky could not be more clear:
‘The widespread revision of curricula to accommodate the so-called Digital Natives does not seem warranted and, moreover, it would be difficult to start “Adapting materials to the language of Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001a; p. 4) when they so obviously speak with a variety of tongues. (page 10)
What are the authors’ reasons for saying this?
Evidence based research.
‘The investigation reported in this paper would have benefited from more in depth, qualitative investigation of both students’ and teachers’ perspectives on technology from a broader range of universities which reflect the diversity of Australian higher education’.
How strong do you consider their evidence to be?
Convincing, with extensive qualitative research now required. Any technological integration should be pedagogically driven.
It should be proactive.
Universities should look to the evidence about what technologies students have access to and what their preferences are.
‘Rather than making assumptions about what students like – and are like – universities and their staff must look to the evidence to inform both policy and practice’. (page 11)
More research is needed to determine the specific circumstances under which students would like their ‘living technologies’ to be adapted as ‘learning technologies’.
The key desires of this 2006 student cohort was:
- Access
- Convenience
- Connectedness
They also desired:
- Blogs
- Instant messaging
- Texting
- Social networking
- RSS feeds
- Downloading MP3s
Which I believe will be satisfied by the current and new generation of SmartPhone i.e. we’re going mobile, though I doubt this will mean we are all suddenly jumping ship and calling this m-learning rather than e-learning.