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Date Posted: 10:14:56 03/14/11 Mon
Author: Thiago Hermont
Subject: Re: TASKS : 3 AND 5
In reply to: Angelina 's message, "TASKS : 3 AND 5" on 09:01:49 03/14/11 Mon

Here is my contribution to task 3:



The digital gap


It is clear enough nowadays that we live in a world where children and adolescents are the almighty conquerors of the digital universe. They read, write, talk and relax in front of computers or any other high-tech device from which interaction is spontaneous and endless. Unlike them, people from the 80’s, 70’s and so on might have a different perspective and also different concepts of reading, writing, talking and relaxing. Just to name a few, we could cite the great role of the paper in their lives (according to Prensky, they have to print e-mails or even get them printed by someone else), the telephone for talking and the television or walks to rest.

In this way, the distinction between these two generations is great. The gap between those who were born about 20 years ago and the older ones seems to be quite deep and it has received a name: Digitality (concept coined by an author called Nicholas Negroponte in his book Being Digital to describe this condition of living in a digital world).

Digital natives are those, therefore, who have been brought up and taught by the previous generations, the digital immigrants. Those denominations were created by Marc Prensky to classify the ones who were born in the digital era and their predecessors. According to him, the natives are familiar since the very beginning of their lives with technology and its ramifications, whereas immigrants learned how to behave in this new world due to external impositions (ironically created by themselves) and will always keep their non-digital accent. Interestingly, digital natives’ parents and teachers all belong to the previous stage, i.e., they are all digital immigrants, some with more or less accent.

This last piece of information is essential to understand the relationship developed between the natives and the immigrants. Their knowledge is been formed under the influence of immigrants. However, such relationship shows how deep is the current gap once misunderstandings happen all the time due to comprehension issues in the language they speak: digital and non-digital. The mentioned problems become much more evident when classrooms’ environment is analyzed. After all, these are the places where knowledge is traditionally – at least for the immigrants – spread.

Considering that, classes are congested by numerous examples of mismatches in the learning process. Teachers try to show what students do not want to listen or – above all – are bored by the way subjects are presented. Teachers, therefore, traditionally adopt and choose two paths to follow: indifference towards students’ needs and desires and a subsequent imposition of old and worn patterns, or the hypocritical and sometimes naďve mask of technology which tries to disguise an unhidden persistence for obsolete methods. This situation is worsen by the lack of efforts from teachers to update themselves and for the belief that there is only way of learning: theirs.

At this moment, the problem rises at its full form. How can educators teach this new generation with the same old tools that were given to them? Is there a difference in the thinking process that they would have to consider? How proficient can old generations get to provide interesting and meaningful learning opportunities for the twenty-first youth?

For these questions, many answers are still waiting to be brought into light. What is widely known is that teachers should try to help learners apply the use of technology in their learning process. The fact that this new generation sees learning through a different prism does not mean that efforts should not be made together to improve both generations’ reality. According to what has been properly expressed in The Digital Generation: teaching to a population that speaks an entirely new language, “it will take the digital natives and the digital immigrants coming together to recognize the different ways things can and will get done and create new best practices and ideas for the workplace and in education”.

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