Cuma, Şubat 05, 2021

From Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants to Digital Slaves

For those who want to read the concepts of Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants introduced into the literature by Marc Prensky about 20 years ago, I am sharing the address of the article below;

 

When I first read this article, I reviewed my own situation and thought about which definition I fit into and finally decided that I was in the "Digital Citizen with Green Card" group. As a reason, I did not exactly fit the definition of Digital Citizens, on the other hand, I was not exactly in the Digital Immigrant group. At that time, the idea was widespread that it would be sufficient to have the devices that would provide this opportunity to become a Digital Citizen and participate in digital media. In fact, most of the researchers were trying to produce projects for this purpose, for example, MIT's projects to give a $ 100 laptop to each child were one of the most prominent, what happened to these and similar projects? Years have passed by showing that such projects, which are made for device ownership, do not yield the desired results, but have we learned? :-)

The only result of these attempts has been to increase the profitability of those who produce these devices. During the COVID-19 epidemic we encountered in March last year, there was a period in which those who had prepared their teachers and students and those who were not ready were separated because we could not understand the situation before and could not act accordingly. Interestingly, we are still in this period and it seems like it will take a long time again to come across a plan, schedule and effort about when it will end and how it will end. It seems that nothing will be the same in our lives. Especially education and training will be affected by this, it is now a necessity to adapt ourselves to a new system where traditional education / training environments are "Blended" with online environments. While those who fit into this environment are Digital Citizens, Digital Slaves are added to the Digital Immigrants group after COVID-19. 

The ability to own and use digital tools and equipment alone does not make societies the producers of these environments anymore. The main problem is that societies with individuals who have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to use these tools for production will make them "digital owners" and others "digital slaves" of this age.:-) 

Access to information is no longer a problem, so it's been a long time since I first said "Knowing is not enough, it is necessary to be able to do this, I apologize to those who know, we hired Google", In other words, we haven't made much progress. 

If we want to be the master of new ages or if we do not want to be the passengers of escaped trains, we must immediately realize the changes and transformations that can raise individuals who can not only know but can. For example, instead of methods that emphasize more applications than theory and show the problem at the end of the chapter, we should switch to new education programs in which theory is learned over problems related to life. We should aim to gain "Computational Thinking" skills for all our students by living in these environments. In Teacher Training, we should definitely gain "TECHNOLOGICAL FORMATION" in addition to the field knowledge and “PEDAGOGICAL FORMATION”.  

While doing these, we should never forget that "Transformation in education takes time", so if we can do these without patiently giving up, we can be among the "Digital Masters" of the coming years :-).

Let's not forget, let me conclude by saying that Knowledge is power and Knowledge multiplies by sharing.

Prof. Dr. M. Yaşar Özden

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