Revolutionaries and Beneficiaries: Better than Natives and Immigrants?
Posted on January 5, 2009
Filed Under education, research |
Most folks who know me know that I disagree with the idea of Natives and Immigrants in terms of technology (ala Prensky). Today’s high schoolers and undergrads are not natives to technology. They don’t have some magical innate ability to understand new technologies. What they usually have is a clear lack of fear when encountering a new technology. They aren’t afraid to try to figure it out and it makes them look more “native.”
As is typical, though, it’s easier to criticize someone’s idea and much harder to suggest a replacement so I’ve been thinking hard about better terms to describe the almost palpable difference between “us” and “them,” looking for a metaphor that helps us understand rather than label, empower rather than excuse. So here’s the idea I’ve been playing with recently. It may not be the right one so I welcome feedback.
Revolutionaries and Beneficiaries
Revolutionaries: Those who have been and are involved in the development, application, and implications of technology accessible to the masses. Regardless of age or education, these are the folks who develop new technologies or ways of thinking about technologies that pave the way for mass adoption. This also includes those who think about the application and effects of these technologies (educators, philosophers, futurists, early adopters etc)
Beneficiaries: Those who benefit from the actions of the Revolutionaries via mass accessible technologies and their application. For example, my students don’t have to wrestle with whether using a word processing program is beneficial to their work because others (educators, technologists, researchers, previous users) have already done the footwork to prove that the convenience and ease that word processing possesses over a typewriter, for example, are worth learning the software.
These are not closed categories. A Beneficiary could easily become a Revolutionary if he/she begins to think about technology in new ways rather than just benefiting from advances and adopting them. Revolutionaries may become Beneficiaries if they settle into a technology they are comfortable with and stop comparing it to other options or stop thinking about the implications of that technology’s use.
I would suggest that most of us are both Beneficiaries and Revolutionaries. When I drive my car or use my microwave I typically don’t think about the way they’ve changed my life. I press the buttons and my popcorn pops. If my microwave breaks and I have to learn to pop popcorn on the stove I may start thinking more like a Revolutionary: “Wow! That microwave really changes the way I live.”
Neither way of thinking is superior to the other. Both have their place. If I allowed myself to get bogged down in Revolutionary thinking every time I switched on a light I’d not get much done. If I blindly adopt every new technology that comes along my quality of life would, no doubt, drop as I tried to use everything in the course of my day without judging them for their usefulness.
So? What do you think? Do these terms ring truer to you than the Native and Immigrant? Are there better terms to describe these ways of thinking and adoption?
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12 Responses to “Revolutionaries and Beneficiaries: Better than Natives and Immigrants?”
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Enjoyed your article.
I would argue that those are stages or characteristics we all have. There are both Concurrent and Developmental aspects of this. Concurrent meaning while I may be a “Revolutionary” Python scripter, I am a “Beneficiary” when I use MS Word, or go watch television. Developmental being when I started programming, I started as a “Beneficiary”, then I became a “investigator”, then a “Hacker/stealer” and now I am a “Revolutionary” (expert?).
I could be misreading your point though.
Ah, the anti-Prensky move continues. I like “tree” response. Can we not catagorize people in more than one catagory. Male/Female, Rich/Poor etc. While Prensky may not have the credentials, he certainly has mainstreamed much of this thinking to our educators. No, not every child is expert, but every child is a native. Just because you are a native of America, does that mean you completely understand the Constitution? Of course not, but you are still a native. I agree that you have hit upon another distinction, but I would argue that there is much to be said for natives/immigrants, especially when helping parents understand the difference between themselves and their children.
@marcius
The problem with the “mainstreaming much of this thinking to educators” is that what has become apocryphal mantra within education is that “natives” (a) are inherently skilled at using all things technology and (b) have a new and unique preferred way of learning unfamiliar to their predecessors. Neither of those are true.
Further, the dependence or at least focus by the natives/immigrants distinction on the age of users is incorrect as well. A user’s need or ability to adapt to new technology isn’t as dependent on age as the popular interpretations of millenials, natives, or net-generation suggest.
@sarah
Revolutionary/beneficiary may be a useful perspective to consider, but I don’t think it’s analogous to native/immigrant. R/B focuses on the differences between the developers and users of a technology rather than the differences between the need and ability of different users to adapt to a technology.
For me, the differences among users in their need, ability or desire to adapt to and use new technologies is still better described by Rogers’ early adopters to laggards.
-Chris
I vote for US and THEM–you decide which one is us.
R/B is a different way of categorizing than N/I. R/B assumes that everyone participates technology, which isn’t true when it comes to things such as computers - or even cars if we include groups such as the Amish. It only distinguishes between how people participate in the technology, not how comfortably they do so.
N/I distinguishes people’s comfort w/ technology. Most likely there is a lot of overlap between the Revolutionaries and the Natives, but the two terms are not synonymous. I think the problem a lot of people have with the N/I description is that they assume that all younger people are Natives, and all older people are Immigrants, while from my experience this is most definitely not true. I teach at a community college, and I find all different levels of comfort among both faculty of various ages, and among my students.
Although my first response was flippant (us and them), I have to agree that both participation in technology and comfort level with technology are valid ways of categorizing–if we need to categorize. In the end, any categorization is offensive to me, regardless of how useful it might be to data researchers. Who wants to be put in a box? So, the us and them works as well for me (or as poorly, in fact). On the ground, we learn to work with what we get, trying to get a class, a body of students, a campus faculty up to speed, so to speak, and it doesn’t help to categorize unless you have course divisions like beginner, intermediate, advanced.
As someone who spent a number of years in a foreign culture, and now watch how my own son interacts with the internet, I have to say that the Native/Immigrant metaphor has some merit. It’s not that our children the natives don’t learn from we the immigrants, it’s that the technological culture is all that our children will know, yet we ourselves will always remember - and miss - some aspects of the pre-information age culture. What’s more, as our children reach adulthood, they’ll notice we still retain a little of the old accent.
The place the analogy breaks down is that the pace of technological change will quickly render all these natives immigrants in their own turn. Ultimately, for the forseeable future, all adults will be immigrants.
Well they say there are two types of people, those who divide everyone into two types of people and those who don’t.
The problem with the digital immigrants / natives is that it implies too much of a polarity, with people all on one side and similar to each other, and everyone else in another. Also, it’s not purely determined by age. I’ve met plenty of students (in a minority though, and becoming a smaller minority every year) who aren’t comfortable with technology and who prefer not to use it. Similarly, I see people my age who are highly proficient and don’t seem to have an analogue accent.
I think the metaphor does have its merits though. However, I think we are all immigrants, we are by nature analogue beings, but we choose to move in to the digital world to different degrees and with different capabilities. Starting younger does help to some extent in shaping attitudes perhaps, but this is more like the children of ex-patriates taking to the culture around them; some do, some don’t.
I usually use the metaphor but refer to it as degrees of naturalisation. That then gives me a continuum to refer to, without assuming which side of a divide people belong to.
They also say there are three types of people, those who can do maths and those who can’t …
Categorisation does help with assessing the needs of students and how to respond to them. There is a danger that they are then labelled as that and the possibility that they may change, or that the categories are immutable. It’s the difference between using categories to inform investigation, or using them to preclude further investigation (as people tend to do with learning styles and personality inventories, as if these don’t change for individuals day-by-day or subject-to-subject).
And observations do sometimes indicate people _are_ falling into two categories when we teach them. I’ve observed teaching people using immersive virtual worlds that there really do seem to be two distinct categories - those who “get it”, who engage and say they learn from the experience, and those who don’t and say they don’t learn. What underpins (or underlies) that difference, I can’t say yet - when I can I’ll know I’m ready to submit my thesis.
“and the possibility that they may change, or that the categories are immutable” … is ignored.
Sorry, realise that sentence doesn’t make sense with the last two words missing.
The “Nature vs Nurture” debate of the 21st Century - Are our children born into this digital landscape attuned to the ‘language’ of technology?
Let’s put aside that question for the moment - in terms of learning and development, nothing has really changed:
* Most children are natural risk-takers (not afraid to try new things and pull things apart to see how they work) - We learn to follow rules, but we can all learn which rules can be bent/broken (Regardless of age)
* Children already explore the world as spatial/multidimensional thinkers (as opposed to linear thinking - you have another term for this Sarah that I can’t remember). The linear thinking we were hounded with at school can be unlearned, and our natural thought processes are easily picked up again - technology is another medium that allows us to harness that creative thinking (Regardless of age)
* Children learn through their play - Who wouldn’t rather be playing than working? Technology allows us to do both (Regardless of age)
IMHO: Children have not changed to adapt to/as a result of the digital landscape. The digital landscape is the ideal environment for children’s natural development. The formative (first 5) years of development have not changed. Children that are not exposed to tv, pcs and Blackberries before they start school don’t fair any worse than those that have. What’s more - we are all capable of thinking and processing information the way the N-Gen/D-Gen do. We just have to give ourselves permission to break a few rules
One last point
* Most teachers have political and financial barriers to overcome before they can embrace the teaching methodologies Prensky discusses - adapting methodologies to technologies takes time and money. Labeling teachers as ‘Digital Migrants’ that need to “just do it” seems a little unfair.
* It all comes down to Exposure/Opportunity and Interest/Need
Just encountered this characterization by David White… Residents vs. Visitors: http://tinyurl.com/4hxvfe