Entry 2: Digital Natives Debate

The material for today on "digital natives" (Bennett, Maton, Kervin 2008) has caused me be to reflect on the different levels of technological literacy that must exist in my students. While Bennett et al criticise the 'moral panic' associated with the tech-savvy of the 'net generation', I am not convinced that the phenomenon of digital natives is not real. I agree with the authors that the generation gap is not as severe as some others (eg Prensky) suggest, but I think there can be large differences in the levels of familiarity and competency that different students have in regards to particular technologies. However, I think these differences can probably (as Bennett et al suggest) be more often attributed to socio-economic and cultural factors rather than age.

On the other hand, there appears to be some research suggesting that those belonging to the tech-savvy group may actually be changing the information processing habits by the level of their interactions with technology and multiple tasks (see the NY Times article in the previous post and also http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/). Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California certainly seems to think so. It will be interesting to see how this research develops and informs the way we think about education as reforming the pathways of the brain to process deep learning.

In the meantime, today’s class has shown that while this unit is directed towards how to integrate recent technology into our teaching, we need to reflect on whether there is an additional value to our students (who have different levels of technological engagement) in using such technologies over traditional teaching methods and avoid using technology "because we can".