Blog Post #2 | Text: Prensky Revisited: Is the Term "Digital Native" Still Applicable to Today's Learner? By Jennifer Spiegel
Question: 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?
Reflection on the Youth and Digital Media
Prensky discusses the youth as digital natives of digital media such as video games, music players, cell phones, video cams and other digital toy. In this sense he believes, that their age gives rise to their connection to these technologies and they are quite fluent in these technologies. In opposition, he believes that older generations are digital immigrants that need to adapt to meet students where they are at. While I can acknowledge these views are a little outdated, I can see how they were relevant to the time. That being said, I disagree with the sentiment that they their age and use of tech in a personal way gives them the title of "digital native". Therefore, I am more in the camp of agreement with Spiegel, as she acknowledges that usage does not equate to fluency of technology. Spiegel names different types of digital users: digital workers, digital creators, digital gamers, and digital workers. Spiegel sees the youth are capable of using technology but does not agree that they are fluent and equipped to handle the analytical lens or that they have curricular skills needed to use technology effectively in the classroom. I would agree, as I saw this in my science classroom throughout the year.
As a middle school teacher, I definitely see my students using technology all of the time in many different forms. That does not automatically mean they know how to use it in a professional or academic way with an analytical lens, as Spiegel points out. I would say many of my students would be considered digital socialites or creators as they create TikToks and use social media apps all day long. However, many of them lack the "digital worker" ability to properly search and use Google effectively. Therefore, the emerging ideas and insights from Spiegel resonate more with my personal beliefs, perspectives, and experiences with technology growing up and with the current students I teach.
In class we talked about Scott Noon's 4-tier model for teachers: preliterate, technocrat, techno-traditionalist, and techno-constructivist. I would consider myself a techno-traditionalist. However, by other definitions, as a person in my daily life, I may be seen as a "digital native". I think this term is severely outdated. As Spiegel calls out, there are not only two options. Digital literacy is a broad spectrum that I do not think can be categorized into boxes. I almost see it more as a four-grid scatterplot (if I use the four named groups Spiegel picks out) with dots scattered about because there is not one clear answer. We are also human beings capable of changing our status. A gripe I have with the term digital native (beyond it being poor word choice socially) is that it does not account for the fact that someone older may be more equipped to use technology in a balanced way in all domains than a 13-year-old that predominately uses it for gaming yet one would be called a native and another would be called an immigrant. These terms do not take into account this fluid nature of digital media literacy. In class discussions, we talked about moving from creators to curators. I think we do all three at once: consume, create, and curate. The current systems we have in place lead to these simultaneously existing. These are ideas I do not think Prensky thought about when he coined these terms and his stance.
My biggest agreement with Spiegel is the notion that digital media usage is a two-way street. We are not just watching screens anymore. We are interacting back and forth with algorithms, software, and the rest of the people around us also in this digital space who may be countries away.
Hey Lauren, I really agree with all of your takes here! I especially loved seeing your integration of Scott Noon's 4-tier model for teachers because I found that to be relevant to this week's reading and wanted to include it in my blog somehow but couldn't figure out how to. I loved how you said as well that humans are capable of changing status and that it's unfair to classify an older generation automatically as a digital immigrant even if they are able to demonstrate proficiency in many different ways to use technology. It makes me feel as though these terms do not have relevance in the current age of technology. I feel as though elementary schools really should prepare students to be digital workers so that secondary teachers do not have to play catch up with basic tech skills they are missing, it's a failure of the system. I hope that you can this upcoming year figure out ways to uplift your socialiates and bridge them as digital socialite workers.
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