Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

 When talking about the digital world's intersection with learning two terms arise; digital natives and digital immigrants according to Prensky. Digital natives would describe me and my age group well. We are equipped with the language that comes with the rise of the internet, social media and the digital age. We are used to reading, writing and communicating online. Digital immigrants on the other hand, are less familiar with this technology and communicating style. They have been raised learning from physical material, processing and answering sequentially. This is often what causes a divide between an older professor and their college aged students.

When I think about my own learning as a creative writing major, I realize we often utilize methods and strategies from digital immigrants. Instead of editing a poem in multiple ways in one revision, we are often trained to complete a revision with one snippet of feedback at a time. We also usually print out and mark up an actual text. This has been more beneficial to my writing than editing a poem on my computer and say, focusing on mood, punctuation and word choice all at once. 

A myth from Kirschner's that supports that learning with some digital immigrant aspects may actually be beneficial is the myth of multitasking. Digital natives often believe that completing multiple tasks at once is both conducive to learning and actually possible. However, Kirschner debunks this, claiming "the ability to multitask, does not exist and that designing education that assumes the presence of this ability hinders rather than helps learning." (Kirschner). 

It seems that having digital prowess yet simultaneously focusing on learning sequentially is a powerful mix from myself as a learner. Understanding both perspectives to our educational as well as social lives.