Critique of Marc Prensky and digital nativism

My friend Alan Wolf sent me a link to an article by Jaime McKenzie in From Now On that makes a pretty searing critique of Marc Prensky and the way that his concept of digital nativism has been picked up by many of those writing about the differences between young and old in how they respond to and use technology.

Critiques of Prensky are way overdue. At a conference I attended Marc Prensky was introduced to a friend of mine who is a wonderfully insightful, productive (and I might add technologically hip) professor of instructional design. On being introduced the first comment out of his mouth was that she was "one of the fun suckers." Arguably his comment was teasing and intended as a joke but it always struck me that a lot of what he writes about is produced in the same sort of way. A shoot from the hip stereotyping based on a very superficial understanding.

Jaime McKenzie's article starts to demonstrate exactly how that is the case. His critique focuses on the thinly supported claims made by Prensky (that what we're seeing is a radical discontinuity) and the poor quality of the citations that Prensky does use to support his assertions. Mckenzie also shows how actual empirical evidence out there contradicts much of what Prensky is arguing.

But go read the article.

My one criticism of the piece is that it starts off strong and ends weakly and Mckenzie allows himself to engage in a little bit of techno-bashing that starts to sound a little like the somewhat hysterical critiques of technology use by the young that we read in convention media eg "Those who substitute FaceBook for face-to-face communities suffer many of the consequences....

We should not substitute one form of stereotyping for another.

On a side note Prensky's misuse of cites is clearly not that uncommon also among real academics.  In today's Inside Higher Education there is an article about some research done that shows that roughly 30% of citations are incorrectly cited or misrepresent the findings.

Comments

[Cee Carmean]

Hear! Hear!
Many of us have long been saying that citing vendors is NOT scholarship. Academic technology writing should still be academic, and based on research, critical thought, peer review.

There are brilliant scholars thinking deeply about the shift to a new age and a new 'generation' - driven by technology and global interactions - but the IT folk continue to claim 'truth' lies in what sales people tell them.

Thank you for standing up to the IT/Orlando mob.

[Alan]

Interestingly, now Prensky's paper on his site is now correct, which is good, now people can assess his evidence, but it is surprising it took this long to find it. Good thing there is the wayback machine

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

It is not clear when the correction was made, only that it was after October 2007 as I could not reach the January 2008 snapshot. I would think rather than just making the correction in a personal site (and acknowledging the change) there should be errata linked to the original article.

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Internet has opened many ways of socialization.

[GadgetTown]

On a side note Prensky's misuse of cites is clearly not that uncommon also among real academics.

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I think that it would be better if you define the term. because we have several options. first, it is to read the article and search for the meaning there, second you can put the link to wikipedia and we can read it there and third you can add it in the post.

[scottsdale periodontist]

This site is good and I believe that people can now see the evidence.

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They have proven a lot of things. Serious on what they do.

[sizegenetics]

digital nativism is under my critiues also! Should be critiqued here and there...

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