I picked up on this article via Nik Peachy’s Tumblr Blog. The article is written by Marc Prensky in November 2012. Incidentally, it was Prensky who originally developed the metaphors of ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’ back in 2001 - a concept which has since been challenged.
Anyway - this is an interesting piece. I find it quite useful to think of technology in terms of how we delegate portions of our mind, whether that be our memory to external devices, or our navigation skills to GPS devices.
I like the final paragraphs, which summarise the challenges for education:
For our students to get the maximum advantage from technology, we must view such enhancements not only as positive, but as essential. We need to reevaluate what “the basics” are for students’ technology-enhanced minds, and we need to revisit all our former notions of “age-appropriate.”
Some things—human passion, empathy, or yearning—may never be outsourced to technology. But we need to learn to combine these human traits with technology in order to make the wisest decisions in our 21stcentury context. For skills we choose to retain in our heads—such as logical and critical thinking—we need to turn to technology-enhanced ways of learning them, such as programming and online communities.
To do this, we need digital wisdom. The unenhanced human is no longer the smartest thing on the planet.
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