Finding the Healthy Balance of Technology

By, Rachel Taylor

            According to the articles written by Marc Prensky, I would have to consider myself to be a digital immigrant due to the year that I was born, and how I was taught in my formative years. Although I grew up during a time that was considered to be the digital immigrant years, (before all the hype in technology) I can say that I never totally agreed with strictly learning from books. I always felt that I learned better by doing a combination of “hands on” projects, with visual lessons, gaming challenges, along with some book/reading lessons.

Once Technology became the rage, I found myself wanting to learn, which has caused me to change with this new input. I realized that to stay connected in the workforce and with my son, who is a digital native, I had to accept the new technology, which I feel helped us both to grow. I believe it is important to be open to change, and if a method of teaching has been proven effective, then we should at least try it. This brings me to agree as Prensky states in his article:

“Today’s neurobiologists and social psychologists agree that brains can and do change with new input. And today’s educators with the most crucial learning missions—teaching the handicapped and the military—are already using custom designed computer and video games as an effective way of reaching Digital Natives” (Prensky 2:7).

I find it wrong and hard to believe how traditional educators, according to Prensky, are not in any hurry to find a better way knowing there is something wrong, and knowing they are not reaching the digital native students like they have with other students in the past. One argument that I do have against a teaching curriculum that is only based on digital natives, is that there are many students in the colleges today who are in a college re-training program, and most of these re-training students are digital immigrants. The college educators must be able to reach digital natives as well as digital immigrants today. To do this they must find a compromising balance that could bring both worlds together, as did with my son and me.

            I home-schooled my son when he was in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades which was both rewarding and challenging. The curriculum I chose to use was from a private school that incorporated learning with a combination of books, visual lessons, audio lessons, hands on methods, gaming challenges, computer work, repetition as opposed to memorizing, and etc. (*This was for every subject). It was amazing to see him learn and grow. When he was tested each year at an approved SAT Testing location, his scores were always, well above average. (My son is now 25 years old and working on his Master’s Degree in Financing). Not only do I believe that a combination of a balanced curriculum works, my son believes it too.

When digital natives feel that nobody is listening and compromising, they begin to zone out. I believe this adds to the boredom already caused by their accustomed “twitch-speed” technology as Prensky puts it. This leads me to agree with Prensky when he speaks about the area of reflection in the digital native’s lives being affected. Prensky says:

“Reflection is what enables us, according to many theorists, to generalize, as we create “mental models” from our experience. It is, in many ways, the process of learning from experience, and in our twitch-speed world, there is less and less time and opportunity for reflection, and this development concerns many people.” “We can and must do more in this area” (Prensky 2:5).

This shows that there must be a healthy balance found in the educator’s curriculum to allow for reflection and critical thinking when teaching digital natives. We cannot just completely eliminate all the ideas and thinking of the digital immigrants, because in some areas their ideas benefit us as human beings.

            Adding computer technology, cell phones, and etc… in my life has made things much easier, but what I find now is that I have to continuously make an effort to find that “happy medium” to attain a healthy balance as I have mentioned so many times in this essay. I found the story narrated by Iris Adler, on WBUR Podcast quite interesting. Although my family has never taken a break from technology all weekend, every weekend, as does the Powers family spoken about in the story, we have taken short breaks from it each day. It is nice to have this time to reflect, connect as a family, and to take time with an enjoyable activity or hobby. One of the industry leaders, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, was quoted by the WBUR Podcast (from a graduation speech at Boston University), and he says it best: “Get offline, at least one hour each day. Life is not lived in the glow of a monitor. It’s not about your friend count. It’s about the friends you can count on.”

            At home I have a high speed connection with Charter Communications, which has worked well for me on my desk top computer and my wireless laptop computer. I have used computers in my past employment, at home, and for school/college. More than likely I will be logging into this course each week on Friday &/or Saturdays, at random times depending on homework from my other classes. Usually I can play around, and figure out new things on the computer, but sometimes it takes someone quickly showing me. This is the first chance I have had to go to college, and I am totally appreciating all the new technology that I am learning!

            One thing I have found from experience on the job is that we should be prepared with a manual plan in case we lose the internet and the system goes down. My digital native co-workers used to laugh when I would print a copy of the daily schedule of clients until one day when the system did go down. They were thankful that we had the print copy to go by. It also amazes me how many people cannot count change back manually because of always relying on the computer for the answer. I had to train my digital native co-workers to do this as well. It was kind of funny to go through that with the digital natives at my past place of employment because they came to respect my thinking and behavior. It brought about a true compromise of thinking. We must all find the healthy balance of modern technology, have an open mind, and learn to compromise between the ways of digital natives and digital immigrants.