... even if he didn't say it.
Maybe we've been misinterpreting Prensky. Maybe we've been putting words into
his mouth. Larry Gillick, of the School of Communication at American University
tries to explain to us that Prensky has been misunderstood.
In his blog he tells us that:
Teachers don't always read the fine print in the definition
of "digital natives." Digital natives have digital expectations, not
necessarily digital skills.
Only a short bit later in that same (rather short) post, Gillick reemphasizes
his point:
Digital natives may be different from digital immigrants,
but they're not necessarily more knowledgeable about the digital.
One of his readers responds to this with the comment:
One reason they might not spot the fine print, is that it doesn't appear in anything written by Prensky - or at least not anything I read of his!
To this Gillick responds:
It's true that Prensky doesn't provide this warning. I suppose he didn't figure it was necessary. I think that we educators read a bit too much into his writing. Whoops.
That rather major "Whoops" (and, in this case at least, the probably
accurate claim that educators find too much in Prensky) not withstanding, I beg
to differ. It's not that Prensky "didn't figure it was necessary". Quite
the contrary, that was a central part of his claim.
Go to: Saying nay to the myth of native, or
Go to: Can we every feel at home?,
Go to: Carrying cognitive baggage from the old
country