Prensky and Kapp....and me :)

     I was wondering why I recognized “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, and then as I began reading the article, I remembered we used it in an education symposium a few years back.   In the education forum there certainly is a lot of discussion as to how we can best educate the children of today.  We can learn much from looking at the Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants as diverging entities (which is the view of Prensky), but I feel much more can be learned by looking at these groups and how they can best come together.  Certainly educators and the education systems of today do need to adapt and evolve with the times, but I do not believe we should assume that our students are incapable of learning from or communicating with the Digital Immigrants and visa-versa. 
     Prensky makes a good point that it is critical for Digital Immigrants to do what they can to learn about the Digital Native culture as it emerges.  However, once again, I feel that good teaching is about celebrating the likenesses and respecting the differences.   There is still a need for “legacy” learning!  I think that is a huge downfall in our education systems today—not everything can be or should be “future content” learning.  Education needs to go much deeper than this surface awareness (which is where I think Prensky stays); it encompasses knowledge and skills to reach the complexity of the learning process, and also the ability and need to make adjustments for every child. 
     As Kapp points out, the transfer of knowledge is crucial for future growth, and there are creative ways of bringing these generations together.  We shouldn’t wait to try and do this in the workforce of which Kapp speaks; rather, we should start in our families, our towns, our schools, and so-on.