Marc Prens

Notes

Marc Prensky Digital Natives Digital Immigrants ©2001 Marc Prensky _____________________________________________________________________________ 1 Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants By Marc Prensky From On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001) © 2001 Marc Prensky It is amazing to me how in all the hoopla and debate these days about the decline of education in the US we ignore the most fundamental of its causes. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today‟s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a “singularity” – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called “singularity” is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century. Today‟s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entir...