Comments on Prensky & Bennett, Redux

Originally, I meant to post this as an part of my mind map on the Prensky and Bennett articles, but I was running behind and didn't do so. Now, when I am attempting to re-edit that post, Blogspot is either eating my picture (not too desireable), or making the entire post a weblink to somewhere else (don't ask me where.) Also not a particularly attractive option. So I've just created this as a separate post (more posts are always better, right?) so that's why this is a separate post.

To begin, I think that Prensky has some interesting ideas, however they doesn't necessarily mean that they are either true or even accurate. He tends to paint with too broad a brush stroke for my personal tastes, his examples either being anecdotal or sweeping generalizations that would be difficult to support with hard data. (Both of these critiques are points made by Bennett, Maton and Kervin in their critique.)

Prensky seems to me to have two primary theses: 1) That somehow students have changed fundamentally in how they learn and 2) That traditional modes of education are flawed in reaching today's learners and that they need to be re-evaluated and re-worked to reach today's student.

With the reservations I outlined above, I thought that the points Prensky made well and that bear further investigation are:

-That people are either digital immigrants, who, no matter how familiar with the technology available and how well they employ it, will always have an 'accent' that identifies them as being from the 'Old World' (although this world is never really defined.)

Here, I disagree with the thesis. I am a remarkably tech-saavy person, fascinated by the latest tech trends and able to converse about modes of communication at levels that leave all but a few students in the dust. This makes me neither an immigrant nor a native (perhaps I am a digital pioneer? One of the first colonizers, who wired together his own Apple II+ computer back when that machine represented the height of personal computing power.) And I have many students who understand how to use certain technologies, but only as far as they find it useful. The technology is neutral, and the ability to use it or not has little to do with age, as it does with other factors, I believe.

-That these immigrants are always lagging behind their students in effectively employing digital modes of education.

As I noted above, I find that as a technology enthusiast, I am usually ahead of my students in grasping and understanding technology but not always necessarily in figuring out how to use it in an the educational milieu. At other times, I simply choose to ignore the technology when I fail to find it applicable or enjoyable or have qualms about the uses that the technology may be put to. I completely skipped myspace.com in favor of the emerging Facebook a couple of years ago because Myspace had gained an image as a place to swap all kinds of media and as a 'pickup spot' in a virtual world amongst many students I knew. I am a privacy advocate, and the web represents an enormous water hazard on the golf course of keeping private information private (no that Facebook, with it's draconian EULAs and apps that spread your personal data like a plague is much better, but, hey, I limit the amount of data I put in in the first place.)

-Prensky posits that students can no longer focus on conventional media the way they once did, having been reared on the rapid-fire data and stimulation available to them.

Here, I believe, the question is not can they focus, but do they choose to? Simply because they prefer certain modes does not mean that the less-preferred modes are somehow inferior, but rather that learners have become accustomed to doing things in a way they perceive as easier or more effective. These two do not make learning in these ways 'better' than the traditional methods. Research needs to be conducted to verify whether this is true or not.

I also take issue with Prenksy's theory that education, in and of itself has fundamentally changed in a digital age. Did education change when Johann Gutenberg invented movable type and ushered in massive changes in the availability and understanding of media that is arguably a greater technological advance than computing and the Internet? That is, did it change how human beings learn, or did it change (albeit massively,) the modes available for learning. This is my major critique of Prensky's work. To use the analogy of archery, teachers still possess the means of educating that they always have; a bow and arrow. What has changed is the number of arrows that a teacher now finds at his or her disposal. These arrows can be more or less effective, depending on their 'target' and how true they fly. The danger is not that a teacher cannot understand how the bow works or cannot operate the bow effectively. The greatest peril is that the teacher who used to have a set of say, 20-30 educational arrows to choose from now has a nearly limitless number of arrows to select from and can easily spend more time in trying to select the correct arrow rather than just grabbing the one that has always served well. It is not that the mode has changed, only the number of options available in employing that mode.

-Shifting to Bennett, Maton and Kervin, I find their critique of Prensky reasonable, questioning the metrics of his claims, and suggesting that there are other factors which may be more telling than the ones Prensky predicates his assertions on.

The most convincing of these questions is that there are other environmental factors, such as gender, economic and social disparities, that limit access to the technology that can account for much of the difference that Prenksy wants to lay at the feet of the technology in and of itself. Again, using my own experiences as an indicator, I am a white male from a privileged First World environment who has access and interest in appropriating and leveraging technology for both my educational and personal advantage. I suspect that, as I pointed out earlier, these factors have more to do with my level of competence and desire to appropriate this technology and use it than the fact that I am nearly 2 generations removed from many of Prenksy's 'natives.'

My final points would be that:

-Learning will always be learning, it is the tools that are available to facilitate learning that change, not the thing in and of itself. Technology has, like Moore's Law (that computing speed and available memory double every six months), made change in all areas of human interaction, including education, MUCH more rapid. What remains to be seen is whether human beings can assimilate the information quickly enough to make use of the data acquired or not.

-Is the educational power of word and image changed predicated upon its mode of presentation? Does reading Moby Dick via a Kindle e-book reader change the fundamental experience of being exposed to a classic work of western literature? Here I would argue that it is the undertaking of the wrestling with the text, in whatever form it is presented in, that will change and shape a human being, and not the mode in which the text is encountered.

-Finally, is it correct to paraphrase Marshall MacLuhan and assert that the medium of education is, in fact, the message of education? This seems to me to be the direction that Prensky wants to go. Ultimately, I disagree with Prensky, and yet there is something to be considered in his position. Teaching and learning will occur, whether it is with the aid of scratching symbols into the dirt with a stick, or in a virtual reality equipped booth filled with the latest high-tech marvels that can simulate with great accuracy a 'real-world' event or situation. Perhaps to me, the most important point that both authors miss is that learning is a human experience and regardless of the tools available, its purpose is to help an individual or group become more fully human, whether in intellect, body or affect, and that there are many different tools available to aid all of these pursuits, but they must be done in conversation with the pupil and the teacher in order to be as effective as possible.