Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives controversy

Prensky coined these two terms to distinguish people born before and during the Digital era.  In his own words “Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology…Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet”. But, what about the rest who were not born in the digital world? According to Prensky, you have to be on one side or the other. i.e, if you did not have access to technology since birth, then you are a Digital Immigrant.

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Nowadays, we are facing a dichotomy whether Digital Native students should learn the old ways, or Digital Immigrant educators learn the new. This view has generated a great deal of heated debate in the educational context, since many people believe that digital immigrants are the ones that should adapt to the natives. Unfortunately, many teachers still prefer dealing with something familiar rather than trying something new and keeping up-dated with the Digital natives. The same happens with the natives who are reluctant to learn in the traditional fashion.

For this reason, we do not agree with Prensky’s distinction as we consider that it is necessary to strike a balance between the different perspectives. Both generations have something to offer to one another and they can profit from that. Not only do we believe that it is necessary for digital immigrants to move forwards, but also it is important that Digital Natives respect and try to deal with classroom situations which do not include technologies or things that are familiar to them. Besides, there are other aspects to consider, such as, schools contexts that may lack the basic technological facilities.

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