You have claimed that the use of new media divides our society into digital immigrants and digital natives. Could you please describe the observations that led to your contention?


Marc Prensky: I would not say that this divides our society - although many have wrongly taken it in that way. Rather, it is just an observation about differences, one that, hopefully, helps people understand and bridge those differences by clarifying them.


What I've observed is that younger people who have grown up with digital technology from an early age have a very different relationship to it than older people, who came to it later in life. I personally started using digital technology as soon as I could get my hands on it, and I really like it, as do many older people. But we are different than the young people who grew up with the technology, especially in our attitudes towards it and our comfort level with it.


I think this is very similar to people who grow up in any culture from birth. They will know things, they will have found things, they will have understood things, and they will have a relationship to whatever the culture is - whether it is a country or in this case a technology - that people who have come to that culture later in life just won't ever have.


I'm sure I wasn't the first to notice these differences, but I was the first to name the groups digital natives and digital immigrants.


Do you have any evidence for the hypothesis that there has been a cognitive change or development - for example, hard facts from research in cognitive psychology - or would you describe the digital natives intuitively in terms of a social phenomenon?


Marc Prensky: We don't really have any hard evidence, at least that I know of, which proves that specific, generalizable neurological changes have taken place as a result of technology. We do, though, have lots of indirect evidence for at least local changes. We do know that the brain is massively plastic, and we know that it adapts to the inputs that it receives.


One researcher has found that musicians have larger cerebellums, probably as a result of all the practice they do. We can hypothesize that, because the digital technology inputs are so different, and so massive, that there are likely some neurological changes taking place. But it is difficult, or impossible, given our currently knowledge and tools, to say precisely what the changes are and whether they are the same changes for everyone in the generation.


But in a larger sense, my overall observation is not so specific. It is rather just a generalization to point out some differences and to put some words around kinds of behaviors that people around the world have observed but, prior to these terms, were not able to give a name to, and therefore had a hard time discussing.


It is obvious that the digital natives have profound technological skills and use digital media as natural means for pursuing their private interests. Will they be able to transfer their skills when it comes to a professional use of digital media?


Marc Prensky: Well, I have a couple of answers. One is that now all the so-called "Digital Natives" have the same level of skill. But what they do all share, I think, is a sense of knowing where they come from in the digital culture, rather than knowing exactly what to do in every technical situation. Obviously many of them do have deep skills, and many of them are able to use the tools easily.


I think that not only will these people transfer their skills, but it goes much further than that. Their new skills and attitudes can, if used properly, be truly transformational for our workplaces, environment, and society. If our companies are smart, they will use the skills of the digital natives to transform their companies.


I think the idea of asking "Will the skills the kids are learning transfer into the companies" is, in a sense, the wrong way - or a backwards way - of asking the question. A better way is "How will the companies be transformed because of these skills?"


Do you see the threat of a clash of cultures, with the digital natives on one side and the elder digital immigrants - who might not have the new skills but still have the power in society - on the other?


Marc Prensky: There might well be some culture clash, and in fact we already see it in our schools. The digital natives are already demanding 21st century tools, and our schools typically don't have them or are not providing them quickly enough. Also the two groups - and again this is a large generalization - often don't see things in the same way.


They often don't see the value of technology in the same way. They don't see the pervasiveness of technology in the same way. And more than anything else, I would say the members of the older generation don't see the changes being brought about by technology happening as quickly as I think they will happen. So yes, there will be some discomfort.


Are teachers nowadays able and willing to transform the traditional learning culture to a modern - let's say eLearning 2.0 - culture? Does this progress imply radical changes in the education sector?


Marc Prensky: There do have to be important changes in the educational sector, but mainly because the sector has refused to evolve, for a very long time, in ways that benefit the students.


I see the needed changes as involving both how we teach and what we teach. The "how we teach" is already in process of changing, but certainly not everywhere, not at the same speed in all places, and certainly not by all teachers at the same time. In any case, though, the teacher who lectures while their students take notes is going to be replaced - and already has been in some cases - by the "guide on the side" i.e. the educators who helps their students learn on their own, with the help of teacher-provided questions, context, quality assurance, rigor, and other sorts of important things that teachers already know how to do, or should.


In terms of "what we teach", I think we need a deep re-examination of what we now do. I don't think that the curriculum we teach these days is going to help our students survive in a world as different as the world will be thirty years from now, when our technology will be over a billion times more powerful.

Applying the Pareto Principle, we ought to eliminate the probably useless eighty percent of what we now teach and keep the twenty percent that is really important. Doing so will give us the room to search for and add things that are truly relevant for our students' future, such as the ability to program and control our increasingly powerful machines.


Thank you Mr. Prensky for the inspiring interview.


Marc Prensky: You're welcome; my pleasure to be here. Thank you!