Digital Natives
October 2nd, 2008
I had planned to followup my article about Apple with an article about the differences between my generation of computer users and my children’s generation. The impetus for my original plan was watching my eight year old daughters search Google the other morning for the term “cute baby animal pictures.” When I saw that Google was able to synthesize that request and deliver links to some very cute baby animals, I thought about the term Digital Native which I had first heard a few years ago from West Virginia’s First Lady, Gayle Manchin. Gayle is a former elementary school teacher and is passionate about learning about ways in which technology can be used in education to assist teachers and children with the process of learning.
The term she referenced originated with Marc Parensky, founder of Games2train and considered to be one of the world’s foremost experts on the relationship between games and gaming technology and the learning experiences of today’s young people. Parensky holds Masters degrees from Yale, Middlebury and the Harvard School of Business and has been an advocate for the use of technology in classrooms for years. Parensky has even worked with the Department of Defense to establish an educational program that embraces the use of games as positive educational tools.
The lesson I learned from observing my daughters at play was that children who have access to technology are able to utilize it and to think, act, and learn in ways that are vastly different than the way we learned years ago.
Today’s issue of Inside Higher Ed features an interview with John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, authors of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, which focuses significantly on data collected at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where both work. The two explore the digital context in which today’s young people are learning and analyze the impact of their digital environment on their learning experiences.
