On Technology and Teaching: “A Brain and A Book”

James Lang, in a Chronicle of Higher Education column, “A Brain and a Book,” takes up Marc Prenksy’s “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.”

Lang presents the premise on which Prensky’s conclusions are based:

The title pretty much says it all: Our students are digital natives who have grown up in the land of technology and know no other way of operating in the world. Those of us who are a generation or two ahead of them are digital immigrants, who grew up in a different kind of world and now have to bumble our way around with our guidebooks. However comfortable we may eventually become with technology, we will remain immigrants, never as connected to the land as the natives.

And having been challenged by Prensky, thoughtfully progresses to his own conclusion:

Let’s welcome the pedagogical innovations of Prensky and his collaborators, but let’s give equal respect to George Justice and his class of students holding books and pens. Our students can learn equally well from both kinds of classrooms, and which one is used should depend upon the subject, the teacher, and the students. . . .

So let’s make use of the technologies that seem appropriate and effective, but let’s not neglect to remind students that, for their own good and that of the planet, sometimes they need to find a pocket of nature or an unplugged classroom somewhere, and sit there with nothing but a brain and a book.