It's quite clear that I have issues with Prensky and the whole digital dichotomy of "natives" and "immigrants". These terms, according to Prensky, were coined by John Perry Barlow (1996, para. 12) in his "declaration of the independence of cyberspace". Prensky (2001a) and others have popularised (and added more to) these stereotypes to that they are now firmly cemented into the public domain like some kind of meme. Like Bayne and Ross (2007), I share the following sentiments which I explored in an earlier blog post:

"In the current political climate, talk of immigrants and natives inevitably evokes complexities and anxieties around migration, integration, and racial and cultural differences in Western society."

Indeed, Palfrey and Gasser (2008) want to reclaim the term "digital native" to mean something else entirely and suggests that:

“...rather than calling Digital Natives a generation – an overstatement, especially in light of the fact that only 1 billion of the 6 billion people in the world even have access to digital technologies – we prefer to think of them as a population … The vast majority of young people born in the world today are not growing up as Digital Natives.”

Prensky is rather keen on using a quote attributed to Dr Bruce D. Perry (now of Child Trauma Academy) which goes like "different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures". In earlier copies of his now infamous papers, Dr Perry went under the name of "Dr Bruce D. Berry" and it's taken 8 years and a lot of flack before Prensky finally corrects it. At the heart of Prensky's work seems to lie a lot of scaremongering rhetoric that's not backed up with any references for the reader to check his claims against, it's quite an odd thing to do considering Prensky has 3 Master level degrees behind him. It's little wonder that Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008) chastise Prensky and others after him by suggesting that:

“...proponents arguing that education must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have sparked an academic form of ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked empirical evidence.”

This was echoed earlier by McKenzie (2007), using a little more sensationalist language, who accuses Prensky of being "guilty of 'arcade scholarship'". 

However, Baroness Susan Greenfield, the eminent neuroscientist and current Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, comes to Prensky's aid by suggesting that further research would be needed to see if there might be a link with the three-fold increase of the drug Ritalin over the last 10 years and the increased exposure of young children to unsupervised and lengthy hours in front of a [computer] screen which, in turn, means their young brains would get use to rapid responses (Settle, 2008).

I do agree with Prensky on one thing and that is the need for learning professionals to be able to "speak" using both "legacy" and "future" languages through the lens of "digital literacy" so that students are better prepared and better equiped to deal with the changing nature of their digital worlds.

References

Barlow, J.P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. [online]. Available at: http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html [Accessed 26 January 2009] 

Bayne, S. and Ross, J. (2007). The "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant": A Dangerous Opposition. Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education. December 2007.

Bennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), pp. 775-786. [online]. Available at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/bjet/2008/00000039/00000005/art00002 [Accessed 26 January 2009]

McKenzie, J., (2007). Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). [online]. Available at: http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html [Accessed 26 January 2008]  

Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008). Born Digital: Understand the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books. 

Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants II: Do They Really Think Differently?. On the Horizon, 9(6), NCB University Press.

Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press.

Settle, M. (2008). Is computer use changing children? BBC News, 15.08.2008. [online]. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7564152.stm [Accessed 26 January 2009]

Indeed, the aforementioned authors have identified a set of modus operandi that is common with a particular group of people that were born after 1982 (give or take a year or two). This M.O., as it were, includes such activities as: multitasking; visual literacy; highly social; constantly connected; a preference to using keyboards than pens / pencils; and a preference to reading on the screen rather than printed text.

A number of reports (Ipsos MORI 2007, Livingstone & Bober 2005) and commentators (Bayne & Ross 2007, Owen 2004) have put out warnings that this might not be the case - the presupposed M.O. just doesn't fit. Delegates at this year's ALT-C conference were cautioned that the so-called "digital native" student may not be overly familiar with Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis and podcasting.

The flip-side to the "digital native" is the "digital immigrant" (more on that later). Both terms have been popularised and mythologised from Prensky's (2001) original work and the basis of which have little or no substantive evidence or research to back-up his claims. McKenzie (2007) accuses Prensky of being "guilty of 'arcade scholarship'". Unfortunately, in the process of lambasting and unpicking Prensky's ideas, theories and claims; McKenzie is also culpable of the same sense of "arcade scholarship" - which is a shame really as he does take Prensky to task.

Whilst I recognised that for many young people the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players are very much a part of their everyday life and culture in the same way that television, radio and cassette players were with me in 1970s - so much so that it stops being technology and becomes normalised - it doesn't necessarily follow that all students use technology or that they appreciate the use of "trendy" technology as part of their learning experience; despite what JISC (2007) may say.

According to Prensky (2001), "digital immigrants" represent the complete antithesis of the "digital natives". Whilst some of the more "smarter immigrants" might be able to embrace technology and begin to speak the same language as the "digital natives", albeit with an "accent", most are not quite as forward-looking or thinking. It is these gross assumptions and the patronising manner that makes the whole "digital divide" debate / discourse distasteful and wholly unhelpful.

The whole lexicon of "digital native", "digital immigrant" (Prensky, 2001), "digital savage", "technological migrant" (Monereo, 2004), "digital colonist" (Sandford, 2006), and "digital refugee" (Feeney, n.d.) is imperialistic in nature and racist by inclination (Bayne & Ross, 2007).

These metaphors alludes towards cyberspace as being some kind of untamed and untapped "Wild West Frontier" with the physical apparatus of pipes, cables, fibre-optics and microwave links being construed as a "digital railroad". This kind of linguistic flimflammery are neither useful nor helpful culturally, ideologically, technologically or educationally; and do very little to help us to try and understand the true digital diversity (cyberdiversity?) of our hetereogeneous student body.

References

Bayne, S. and Ross, J., (2007). The "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant": A Dangerous Opposition. Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education. December 2007.

Feeney, L., (n.d.). Digital Denizens. In: Previously In The Spotlight [online]. Available at http://loki.stockton.edu/~intech/spotlight-digital-denizens.htm [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Frand, J.L., (2000). The Information-Age Mindset: Changes in Students and Implications for Higher Education. Educause. September/October 2000.

Howe, N. and Strauss, B., (2000). Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. New York: Vintage Books.

Ipsos MORI, (2007). Student Expectations Study: Findings from Preliminary Research. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/studentexpectationsbp.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

JISC, (2007). In Their Own Words: Exploring the learner's perspective on e-learning. JISC [online]. Available at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/intheirownwords.aspx [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Krause, K., (2007). Who is the e-Generation and How are they faring in Higher Education? In: Lockard, J. and Pegrum, M. (eds) Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet. New York: Peter Lang. pp. 125-139. 

Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., (2005). UK Children Go Online [online]. Available at: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/bober/UKCGOfinalReport.pdf [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

McKenzie, J., (2007). Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). [online]. Available at: http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html [Accessed 29 November 2007] 

Monereo, C., (2004). The Virtual Construction of the Mind: The Role of Educational Psychology. Interactive Educational Media. 9, pp. 32-47. 

Oblinger, D., (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials: Understanding the New Students. Educause. July/August 2003.

Owen, M., (2004). The Myth of the Digital Native. Futurelab. June 2004. Available at: http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/web_articles/Web_Article561 [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Prensky, M., (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), NCB University Press.

Sandford, R., (2007). Digital Post-Colonialism. Flux. 14 December 2006. Available at: http://flux.futurelab.org.uk/2006/12/14/digital-post-colonialism/ [Accessed 29 November 2007]

Sources 

The photo comes from Lynetter's "Interesting Snippets" Photo Set on Flickr.