Article Assessment 1

Laron Thomas llthomas2@uas.alaska.edu Sept 14, 2008

Listen to the Natives by Marc Prensky

Overview

Marc Prensky in his 2001 article Listen to the Natives argues that teachers need to teach via digital media. His argument goes that, unlike in the past, today's generation of students are way different than past generations' students. He defines them as digital natives and digital immigrants respectively. Prensky states, "Our students are no longer 'little versions' of us,' as they may hve been in the past. In fact, they are so different from us that we can no longer use either our 20th century knowledge or our training as a guide to what is best for them educationally." Using this fundamental assumption, he argues for an all-out change in our education system. Along this line, Prensky proposes the following changes:

• teachers hired for empathy not content knowledge
• student engagement over content
• students as classroom desicion makers of curriculum
• teachers as facilitators
• digital classroom with use of cell phones, wikis, video tapes, blogs, ebay, etc.
• programming taking the places of traditional literacy
• math through gaming

In this way, teacher, parents, and administrators ought to listen to the natives for educational reform and classroom change.

Reference Points

1. Cliche language metaphor where today's students are native speakers, and the teachers are the digital immigrants of computers video games, and the internet.
2. Students today are "evolving" so quickly that educators can't keep up with the usual inservice trainging and workshops.
3. Too much emphasis on teachers' content knowledge. Instead, we need to focus more on their empathy and guidance abilities.
4. Teachers should put engagement before content knowledge and encourage the students to design instruction by asking them how they'd teach class.
5. Teachers still work as discussion guides but must learn to incorporate students' new prior knowledge.
6. If educators listen to today's brightest students, they may provide the solutions to today's thorniest education problems, e.g., Webcam evaluations of teachers and streamline the homework submission and correction process.
7. Herding and teacherds, i.e., "Herding is students' involuntary assignment to specific classes or groups, not for their benefits but for ours."
8. "Programming is perhaps the key skill necessary for 21st century literacy. Many kids are already proficient enough to do their assignments as programmers.
9. Techno-Byte: U.S. teachers who say that computer technology has affected the way they teach: To some extent--86%, A great --55.6% (eSchool News, 2005)
10. Curriculum of the past is a "legacy" curriculum, which is not needed and "becoming an increasingly moribund and irrelevant institution." Students need to be learning about nanotechnology, bioethics, genetic medicine, and neuroschience and can meet with professionals in these fields via media.

My Reflection

I think that this article is absolutely rediculous in its content. The only way I can read it with out dropping dead laughing is if I take the weaker version of Prasky's argument. Prasky must have been using his stronger argument as a hyperbole, an overexaggerated story. He seems to use this as a call to wake educators up to changing trends in students' prior knowledge and teaching methods and tools. If he really meant what he said, I wonder how this article could have EVER been published. First, I will focus on the huge fallacies of his strong argument and how its complete nonsense. Second, I will turn gears towards what I think his point was in the weaker version of his argument.

Strong Version (Hyperbole?)

In this argument, I could attack many claims Prensky makes. I'll start with his main assumption that kids of the 21st century are digital natives and the adults are digital immigrants. Some psychologists propose a dichotomy between learning and acquiring knowledge. In this dichotomy, they propose (and I admit that I agree with them) that languages are acquired, not learned. Unless under very special circumstances, all people-and only people-everywhere acquire unconsiously at least one language pretty much completely by the time they turn five years old. Nobody needs to teach children language even though they don't know anything coming into the world. This language is one of the most complex systems. For example, computational linguists can only come to a very gross approximation of language as it is. It is a human phenomenon, which is different from learning knowledge consciously. Technology is learned consciously. In fact, this analogy is a cliche and is not even true. Many adults know how to use computers and media a lot better than kids. Kids may learn more about using media as they get older, but then again maybe they won't. In this way, the article is a gross overgeneralization. I'm not particularly savvy yet I haven't found many kids who know how to use media better than I do.

Further, there are some really BIG questions left untouched. Prensky mentions that the schools are not meeting the children's educational needs. Prensky proposes empathetc not necessarily knowledgable teachers, students as designing the curriculum, and "fun" instruction over content. Although I don't think that teachers have to be experts, they must know their subjects fairly well to be able to teach it. It's absolutely rediculous to even think of students creating their own curriculum. If we want to institute this, we are saying that children know what's best for them and should be the teachers. Where are the parents and the authority figures like the curriculum developers and teachers? The most educated people on these issues are the curriculum committees and teachers, not the students. Period. Now that's "common sense." Additionally, Prensky assumes that our educational woes (which is a questionable topic as is) have to do with lack of engaging teachers. I believe content can be fun and engaging, and it can motivate students to want to learn more. Finally, Prencky proposes programming as literacy. The problem with this is that students have to learn to program. Traditional literacy is really a prerequisite to programming much like his claim that we need to teach students nanotechnology. How can you get into nanotechnology without first understanding the physics and chemistry that make it possible?

So, Presky make A LOT of unfounded assumption on education and the teaching profession. He is BIG on change and lean on fact.

Weak Version

Despite the completely outlandish comments Prensky makes, his article has a thread of truth. Educators, administrators, curriculum designers and the like must think about how they can change curriculums to be more up-to-date, more relevant, and more apt to use technology to illuminate content used in teaching. Meanwhile, we must realize that qualitative knowledge is what we're going for, i.e., understandings. There are many way to reach these understandings and using different media sources can be a great way to teach such stuff. I as an educator can think of ways to make content learning more engaging by allowing my students to use these media sources. Further, they can play games to learn math, communicate with experts in their fields, etc. However, I think that we can and should make the content engaging in its own right for virtue that it is what it is.

Finally, I want to point out that it is important to listen to our students. They can assess us as teachers. They can help us as teachers by answering questions such as "What did you think about how we taught that?" and "Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve and make learning X more interesting?" It is true that we must listen carefully to what our students have to say. Then we can modify our curriculum, or game plan, accordingly.