Digital Natives Digital Immigrants Analysis

Since children today have become digital natives; they will never truly know a world that is not touched with technology. This means that the educational paradigm has to shift in order to keep up with the needs of our young learners (Jo, 2016). In the last thirty years, technological advances

Americans are known to reflect on East Asian education systems, then compare those systems to the education system here in the United States. When doing so, people tend to come to the same general conclusion: there are intensifying problems within the American education system. Marc Prensky, the author of “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” argues that the real issue with educating today’s youth is that our education system’s design does not accommodate today’s students since they are not the same as the students who molded our education system years and years ago. Today’s students are referred to as “digital natives” and their educators are referred to as “digital immigrants.” Delivered through Prensky’s syntax/diction and his overall audacious

Cathy N. Davidson suggests an innovative education system, providing an emphasis in today’s digital era, and claiming that the existing education system needs to be renewed according to the new expectations of the digital era. Davidson states that,” In the last half century, many changes have occurred in the technology field, however, classrooms and educational methods have remained fairly steady for the past years as well in consequence students are not being prepared for the future advances of society.” That being said, it is important to improve and to give a change to the current educational methods, adjusting them to the existing demands of the era that we are living and taking advantage of the resources that it provides. “What if we continued to the lesson of internet itself,

Technology has many attributes and applications that improve livelihoods. As a student myself, one of the most obvious advancements is in the field of education. Educational technology has slowly been integrated into classrooms over the last decade. Today, the basis of technology, digital literacy, is a crucial skill for academics. “Students who are digitally literate know how to effectively use technology to collaborate, create original content, and conduct in-depth research for academic purposes” (Dotterer, “Fostering Digital Citizenship In The Classroom”). Some worry that the use of technology will encourage people to “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful” (qtd. In Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”).

In earlier times, the acquisition and spreading of knowledge was not used to improve society. Instead, it was used to have control and to exclude certain groups. It may have been agreed that there needed to be a change in the way that the education system was set up. In her essay, “Project Classroom Makeover”, Cathy Davidson discusses how the “one size fits all” model of learning hinders students from learning in a new and modernized way. She suggests the notion that using technology to teach and learn can be effective in many ways. Davidson shows that using technology presents the opportunity for a traditional classroom to become more inclusive and creative. The “democratization of knowledge” is the improvement and modernization of how information is taught and learned. Having a modernized and advanced learning system is a vital point for students because they gain insight and experience with what is considered a society dominated by advanced technology. Since technology has become a dominant resource in the 21st century, it should be used as a teaching tool in order to produce educational, professional and overall success.

“If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.” This quote has been attributed to many different persons, but regardless of the origin, this statement has never been more applicable than to the current state of education and the use of technology in today’s classrooms. Mark Weisner stated, “We live in a society in which technology is so pervasive that we do not notice it anymore when used for everyday tasks such as information retrieval, communication and entertainment” (cited in Swan, van t’Hooft, Kratcoski, & Unger, 2005, p.99). Many middle school age students have never known a time when daily use of technology has not been as common as

For some of us, it is difficult to comprehend why our education systems have not yet made the transition to technology-based forms of teaching especially when we are in the era of technology. To others, the reasoning is clear and they support the original, dated usage of textbooks in a “traditional classroom” setting. The changes in our society are undeniable with the innovation of technology and social media. Although some authors, such as Neil Howe and Jean Twenge, argue that technology is deteriorating the minds of Millennials, technology is also providing Millennials with a way to create connections across communities.

In the text ‘The dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future’ written by English professor Mark Bauerline at Emory University, he continually emphasizes the implication that the millennial generation has intellectual deficiencies because of their dependency on social media and technology. One of his most relevant theories is that the use of video games and the integration of technology into the classroom has negative impacts on a student’s academic performance because “It conditions the minds against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unassisted by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else” (Bauerline 95).

In today’s society, it is relatively easy to spot an individual who was forced to adapt to

In the section titled The Dumbest Generation, “Digital Nation” lays out a haunting narrative describing technology’s negative impact on students today. This section draws from an interview with Mark Bauerlein, a professor and author of book titled “The Dumbest Generation.” Bauerlein claims that reading, writing and math skills of students have all already began to deteriorate. It seems that constant interruption and attempts to multitask are at the heart of this deterioration. I received my first smart phone just before the beginning of this semester, from my own experience I can only agree with the assertion that technology puts a damper on the educational experience. The issue does not come with the technology itself, rather, the desire for constant connection distracts from the learning experience. As the first generation of persons who grew up with technology become parents, I hope they can teach their children the skill of moderation and the importance of education – skills often not taught to kids today by their parents born before the technology boom. These ideas will solve the deterioration of reading, writing, and math that Bauerlein speaks

Technology is swallowing the old ways of learning. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” by Sherry Turkle both bring light to the idea that technology, computers and the internet, is changing the human thought process. Carr believes that technology is “tinkering with the brain, remapping the neural circuitry, and reprogramming the memory” (53). He writes that humans are becoming the machines, obsessed with “efficiency and immediacy” (55). Turkle bases her essay on the theory that we are becoming a computer culture. She states that “we live in a culture of simulation […] in programmed worlds in reassuring environments where the rules are clear.” (303). Technology is creating

What did mankind do before the internet? Educational technologies are changing the lives of current and future generations. For years, technology has been flooding into the classrooms of youngsters. On an average, a student uses up to three devices daily. Teenagers count on a cell phone to do things, from waking them up in the morning to giving them any information needed during the day. The incredible World Wide Web saves many hours of research for a paper compared to three decades ago when days were spent looking up research that is now available almost instantly. The floppy discs of a few decades back cannot compare to digital textbooks on mobile devices, e readers, laptops, or tablets of the day. Technology plays a huge role in today’s world impacting education on major levels in regards to accessibility, communication, and opportunity. Education will continue to be part of people’s lives, regardless of age or lifestyle.

Every day the world is changing and things are done differently. Technology has also affected the way students are taught and in which they learn. It has changed the classroom. Technology saves us time and allows us to access material in only minutes. “The Internet and online subscription databases, even as a supplement to the printed works in the library, allow students to see, and force them to consider or reject, points of view that they might never have encountered in decades past” (Gow 4).With all the time technology produces, it also has downsides and it also may have created a less intelligent society.

It seems that technology is growing, improving, and changing at an exponential rate. Technology now affects every part of our lives from the time we get up to the time we go to bed, and even as we sleep. One of the major areas that has been affected by technology is education. At one time, the only option for students to complete their education was in a traditional classroom setting. There has become a major need for non-traditional education because there has been a growth in the amount of non-traditional students that exist in our society. The advancement of technology has

Some authors believe that technology and social media play a positive impact in education. For example Marc Prensky, an American writer and speaker on learning and education in his article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” Prensky talks about the differences in learning abilities in today’s students that he refers to as digital natives as compared to the older generation that he terms as digital immigrants. Digital natives have brains that can receive and process information faster than older generations. In addition, they can retain information that is more detailed. Judging by this reason, technology is advantageous to mental development (Prensky). I disagree with Prensky because, despite the fact that technology has many advantages to