Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

Marc Prensky, author and CEO, of games2train.com and Corporate Gameware LLC, is one of a growing number of advocates of gaming technology in education. Prensky asserts that not only is gaming effective but it is necessary to engage today's students who have never known a home without a computer and have lived lives were technology is a constant, seamless dimension of their social and learning experience. It is in this environment that their brains developed differently from previous generations. He calls these students Digital Natives:

"Today'’s students have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age… Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked. They thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards. They prefer games to '“serious'” work."”
-- Marc Prensky , Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

He says teachers, who are "digital immigrants" still speak with a pre-digital accent, and that we are often unable to engage students with the language and skills students posesess. In this lecture at the 2003 Annual Conference on Distance Learning, Prensky makes his case and is careful to point out that it is not the "bells and whistles" that make games great tools for learning but it is the frequent problem solving challenges that games present.

I find his argument intriguing but I am not convinced that the mental development of future generations is beginning to be altered by technology. That day may come. I think, however, he is actually rediscovering what many educators have advocated for more than a century: that learners need to be active -- they must challenged to do something -- and they must be engaed in something relevant to their experience. I believe if you stripped away the games from his thesis, the principles of his argument would still apply.

There are some practical matters to address if we are to incorporate gaming technology and pedagogy. One is that off-the-shelf games may not be vetted by qualified academics. If we do have to create original games, does it make sense for every college, much less every class, to have its own game? To be cost- and time-effective, we need to have games that can be shared among educational institutions. Once the technology is in place, the teacher will be challenged to determine when and how they engage in and evaluate student learning, especially if the game has a long duration. A student may not make a linear progression and in fact may appear to be floundering only to surge "ahead" late in a game.

As Presnsky says in his speech, "this will be hard work."