Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky & The Maching is Us/ing Us by Wesch

Hyperlinks

When preparing for this article, I first watched the video by Wesch. This video was interesting because at first I was a little confused about where it was going, I did not really know what to expect. As I watched, the video I began to become very intrigued by the complexity and the simplicity it had in the overall about Us, the Digital Natives. As I watched, one link turned into another and one sentence instantly changed. I realized how much our generation has taken technology and made it into a daily part of our living and also how much easier it is to maneuver with a simply back space, cut or delete rather than the old fashion paper, pencil, and eraser. Technology has come a long way and like the video seen, we are the Machine and the Machine is Us. What we search and the things that we do with these tools helps it to become more advanced, and the more we learn about it and the more we investigate, the more it learns, because these machines can only learn and do what we teach it. We are the answer to the advancements, we are the reason technology has come along the way that it has. Without Us it would have remained and without it, we would still be learning old fashion methods, or like Prensky put it "step by step method."

 Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants are names that have been thrown around for a little while to describe the new generation learners and the old generation learners. Prensky talks about how today's "K-College" are all Digital Learners. We are the people who grew up in the technology as it began to advanced and we have advanced with it. The way I learn compared to the way that my mother learns is quite different. For instance, my mother rather learn sitting at a desk with a professor and a book going literally step by step, were myself on the other hand, I do not want the book and a lecture but I rather be hands on and also learning if there is some other method to help speed up the process, something visual. This goes for many of the people in my generation and even those in my mothers. Prensky also talks about the shift in learning and the gap between the DN and the DI. The DIs feel as if we are uninterested and that they just are not able to get the DN to do the things that they need to do for the class or even keep our attention, which is correct, but it brings up the issue in which Prensky talks about that is, we have to integrate the learning.

We have to learn how to integrate the learning between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants by combining Legacy and Future.
  1. Legacy talks about the basis to learning which are our fundamentals.
    • Reading
    • Writing
    • Mathematics
    • Logic Thinking and Understanding
these are the things that no matter how technologically advanced our world becomes, we cannot begin to learn and understand the more advanced levels of learning without first learning our foundation. Though, this does not mean that it cannot be taught in a technologically advanced manner, we can help make learning our basics interesting and even develop a better understanding of them.

    2.  Future talks about our technological advancements
    • Software
    • Hardware
    • Robotics
    • Genomic
    • Ethics
    • Politics
    • Sociology
these items are the tools that we have to help teach to the Digital Immigrants in hopes that they are willing to learn and adapt so that they can continue to educate the new generation. We have the advancements with technology as youth, but they have the education and background knowledge that we need them to teach us in order to help us teach the Machine. This is going to also be done by understanding the Neuroplasticity and the Malleability of our brains. If we do not understand this, the Digital Immigrants will never be able to communicate with those who are Digital Natives nor those who are adapting the new day and age of technology.

Overall, I really enjoyed this reading and the video. It reminded me of the things that we talked about last semester, and it also reminded me of the things that I have heard from other classes that are connected. The terms Digital Native and Digital Immigrants are becoming very popular and I think that Prensky is correct. If we do not find a way to merge the knowledge of the two, we are not going to be able to keep prospering as a whole. We need the knowledge and skills from both worlds in order to continue Us/ing the Machine.





5 comments:

  1. Tiarra,
    I really like how you broke down the different meanings I feel it becomes more understandable when you do that very helpful post !

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  2. I love your quote "We are the answers to the advancements, we are the reason technology has come along the way it has".... Our generation has been a part of a huge technological advancement, which is really great.

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  3. Great explanation. I was so confused by the video even after watching it a couple of times and you explained it very well.

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  4. I really like the breakdown of legacy and future, and how we need to incorporate both. I have already noticed an overlap in technology in mathematics with kids and even myself. people can't do basic math free hand or in their head because calculators are so prevalent.

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  5. i like how you went about braking down the terms.

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