Fall 2008 - Maryland School for the Deaf

Linking Digital Immigrants with Digital Natives
Melinda C. Padden, Assistant Superintendent/Principal, FC, melinda.padden@msd.edu
Ms. Lisa Houck, Principal
Intern, and Ms. Melinda
Padden, Principal, kicked off
the Frederick Campus’ 141 st consecutive
school year with a presentation, “Linking
Digital Immigrants with Digital Natives.”
They addressed the digital shift between
faculty/staff and students and strategies that
could be used to link the two generations.
Marc Prensky, a motivational speaker
and author of “Digital Game-Based
Learning,” and “Don’t Bother Me, Mom
– I’m Learning,” says “Our students have
changed radically. Today’s students are no
longer the people our educational system
was designed to teach.” Students today
were born with media technology readily
available; thus, they spend their entire life
learning via multiple multimedia sources.
Their generation is known by a variety of
names: Digital Natives, Generation D,
Nintendo Kids, the MTV, Google, or
Net Generation.
Diana Oblinger, Director of the
National Learning Infrastructure
Initiative, explains that teachers today
are from the Baby Boomers (born 1946
– 1964), X (born 1965 – 1980) and Y
(born 1981 – 1994) generations. She
defines each generation according to the
technology available during their era. The
Baby Boomers acquired black and white
televisions, FM broadcast radios, manual
then electric typewriters, and large data
processing systems called mainframes.
The X generation grew up with color televisions,
CDs, VCRs, Atari 2600 games,
and personal computers while the Y
generation had MP 3 and DVD players,
hand held mobile devices, the internet,
e-mail, and Instant Messaging (IM).
Researchers like Prensky believe that
the extreme exposure to multimedia
has impacted the way today’s students
think and process information. Some
have argued that their brains are wired
differently from the generations before
them. It is even mentioned that their
social skills are no longer interpersonal,
they are more intermachine.
According to Prensky, when students
of this Media-Centric Generation reach
the age of 21, they will have spent over
10,000 hours on cell phones, 10,000 hours
playing video games, over 20,000 hours
watching television/movies, over 250,000
hours sending/receiving e-mails and IMs,
watched over 500,000 hours of television
commercials and less than 5,000 hours
reading printed material. While digital
technology is the center of their livelihood,
their educational environment has not
Digital Native students are busy at work in the High School Computer Lab
(L-R) Tyler Lewis, Katie Millios, Andrew Biskupiak, Grant Whitaker, Heather Mansfield-Hom
THE MARYLAND BULLETIN, FALL 2008
changed much from that of the X and
Y generations.
How do Digital Native (DN) learners
think differently from their Digital
Immigrant (DI) teachers? According to
Prensky in “How Digital Natives Think
Differently,” DN learners’ brains are fast
paced due to the constant exposure to
MTV, video games, etc. while their DI
teachers, who grew up without digital
technology and adopted it later in life,
are slow paced and prefer a selection of
limited sources at one time. DN learners
are talented in processing parallel tasks
or hyperlinks at the same time while
their teachers prefer one task at a time.
DN learn best with multiple visual and
auditory effects such as pictures, sounds,
and videos while their DI teachers expect
them to read heavy textbooks. Network
interaction is the best way to reach DN
learners, yet today’s students are expected
to work independently, listen to lectures
and participate in traditional group activities
without instant gratification; DN are
used to receiving instant rewards from the
digital games that they play. The best way
to reach DN learners is through lessons
that are relevant and fun.
DN students’ remarking about
today’s education system say things
like “School didn’t teach me to read – I
learned from my games,” “Every time I go
to school, I have to power down,” and “I
get bored if it’s not all going on at once.”
One researcher felt that some of today’s
students are mistakenly diagnosed with
Attention Deficit Disorder. They may be
inattentive and restless because of their
DI instructor’s slow-paced lessons are
difficult for DNs’ attention span.
The challenges that today’s DI
educators face are to identify learning
strategies that are appropriate for DN
learners, recognize the different ways
that they process information, and
develop learning tools that maximize
their extraordinary cognitive skills. One
example is for DI educators to wean them-
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