Digital Immigrants versus Digital Natives

        Prensky's article uses the term, "Digital Immigrants" to describe those people who grew up in a world with little technology and now live in a world where technology is commonplace.  Digital Natives are those that have only grown up with technology at their fingertips and they have never experienced a world without technology.  Prensky's article discusses what happens when the Digital Immigrants have to teach the Digital Natives and how the old ways of teaching will no longer be effect for the new ways these children think.
        
        In some ways, children's thinking patterns have changed in the sense that when children learn new things, they relate them to what they know which is now mostly technology related - cell phones, computers, the Internet, video games, etc. They may recall something they have seen on the Internet or television and use that as a perspective for the new things they are learning. The experiences that they have had with technology have shaped the way they think and learn new things.

       The way that children communicate is much different now. They speak and write the way they text, using abbreviations and as much shorthand as possible. The way they think is much more fast-paced because that is how they are when they are on Facebook, texting, playing video games. Children are more able to multi-task and focus on things that interest them, such as communicating with friends. They tend to not be as interested in doing work at school, where they are not connecting to someone or something. They want to learn through games and interaction because those are the kinds of experiences they are used.

So children's thinking patterns have changed as a result of the way they have learned things, through much different experiences than the generation before them. This means that for educators if we want to reach our students and have them learn, we must appeal to the experiences they are used to "hook" them and get them on board for learning. We have to change the way we are teaching, and that is a difficult task.