My father is 78 years old. English is his second language. He is an immigrant and naturalized citizen of the United States, but he is not a digital immigrant.  In the late 80s, he bought his first personal computer and enrolled in a correspondence course to learn all he could about this new wave of technology that was quickly changing how he would do his job. He was a Certified Public Accountant, and everything in his office was being digitized overnight.  My father is not the type to bury his head in the sand. He is a life long learner, so he knew then he had to stay current and educate himself if his company was not going to provide him with the new skill set he needed. I always like to think of my dad as a digital pioneer because he was using a computer almost before I even saw the value in them. For a long time, my typewriter remained my friend.

Fast forward to the late 90s. By now my father is quite comfortable in cyberspace. He enjoys the anonymity of chat rooms to make his political statements and connect with fellow exiles from the motherland.  One day, as he still recounts, he happened to stumble upon a message board of exiles who were looking for family members now living in the United States. Through the magic that happens only in cyberspace, the first post he opened was from a man living in Burbank, California who identified the name of my father’s aunt, and the exact street address of my dad’s childhood home. This man was looking to find his family. Immediately, but cautiously, my father replied. Several messages later, my father and his 89 year old uncle, also a digital pioneer, had been digitally reunited after a 45 year absence. Several months later, the need for physical connection with family led us all to coordinate a family reunion in Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California establishing an instant bond with cousins we never knew existed. To this day, although we live on opposite sides of the country, we all maintain a digital relationship because of my father and his uncle’s spirit of being life long learners. My father’s uncle has since passed away. He was in his 90s. However, upon finding my dad, my uncle’s age did not prevent him from emailing my dad everyday. (He did not call him to check if he had received his emails, by the way.) As a ninety year old man, my great uncle, also an immigrant to the U.S. and a World War II veteran with English also as his second language was far from being a digital immigrant. He was very much a life long learner and digital native, much like his nephew, my father.

Where I’m getting at with my family anecdotes about digital connections is that in the United States, when we are afraid to call things as they are, we make up all these colorful euphemisms, so we make people feel better about themselves.  I understand that. In the spirit of civility, we can’t very well go around calling people morons all the time when they refuse to embrace life long learning or technology, especially if they are educational stakeholders. And, everyone of course is entitled to choose to live in an unconscious state of ignorance. I am really thrilled though with Prensky’s “Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives” bold use of language to describe educators who don’t embrace technology:

 “It’s just dumb (and lazy) of educators – not to mention ineffective – to presume that (despite their traditions) the Digital Immigrant way is the only way to teach, and that the Digital Natives ‘language’ is not as capable as their own of encompassing any and every idea.”  

Technology is too terrifying for many educational stakeholders in the U.S. because it not only empowers teachers, it empowers students and their parents, and you know what happens when you become empowered: the status quo is threatened. The word empowerment in the public school system is thrown around all the time, but it’s just doublespeak, to be honest. If you’re lucky enough to work in a school that allows you to be creative, and these schools do exist, then consider yourself absolutely blessed! But let’s not kid ourselves, we have a crisis in education because too many schools, (not all of course; I’m not generalizing) especially those in urban areas, operate in crisis mode, and lack leaders who are life long learners. If you work in a school where you are forced to design common assessments with other teachers who have no idea what the word assessment means, or if you’re told you must read from a script, or else, because the district does not trust you are smart enough to design your own lessons, then chances are that you will quit before your fifth year of teaching, with good reason, or become a digital exile like me to get your teaching fix. I happen to be lucky enough to be able to quit about 4 years ago, by the way, because I realized that I could not fight the system for another 20 years, and the system was slowly killing me. There were way too many days in my life as a public school teacher that I felt demoralized and abused, never by the students, always by the adults, and no matter how much I tried to stay positive, when something is “rotten in Denmark”, there are not enough days on those positive affirmation calendars to get you through the school year.

I do agree with Prensky that students have changed, but what I think remains the same is that human beings need to create and connect. Maybe our students’ brains have physically changed. I’m not a neuroscientist to argue against this, but what I do know as common sense is that all human beings have a natural desire to learn, and need opportunities for expression and connection. So many of our schools prevent students from discovering that they are life long learners, the antiquated methods kill creativity and the ability to think for oneself. 

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Also, here’s a video I have linked to before titled The Danger of the Single Story. I am including it again because it’s important for us to remember when it comes to immigrants or natives, there is a danger in always telling a single story about the experiences of human beings.