The document summarizes Apostolos Koutropoulos' article "Digital Natives: Ten Years After". It discusses key points from the original article, including the coining of the term "digital native" by Marc Prensky, Prensky's initial descriptions of digital natives in his "digital native canon", additions and extensions to the canon from other authors, perspectives directly from digital natives, and how demographics affect digital native traits. It also covers topics like access to and use of technology, the difference between personal and educational technology use, and locus of control regarding technology skills.

1. Digital Natives: Ten Years After
by
Apostolos Koutropoulos
EDUC-9701-Reading Discussion (Week-7)
30 April 2013
Bhavani Natarajan

2. Key Points of this presentation
 Coining of the term Digital Natives
 Prensky’s Digital Native Canon
 Addenda and Extensions to the Canon
 Straight from the Digital Natives
 Demographics Matter
 Access to, Utilization, and Quality of Engagement
 Personal Technology and the Leap to Educational Technology
 Locus of Control

3. Coining of the term Digital Natives
Lots of articles were written about the digital natives since the coining of the term ten
years ago. These writings were considered as common sense and have been repeated
many times in many educational contexts. Other common terms, net-generation(Oblinger,
Oblinger & Tapscott, as cited in Kouropoulos, 2011, p. 525) and Millenials (Strauss & Howe,
2000 as cited in Kouropoulos, 2011, p. 525) are used to describe this same generation of
students.
The term “digital native” was coined by Prensky (2001a, p. 1) in his early writings ten years
ago. In his recent writings he acknowledges the fact that “by virtue of being born in the
digital age, our students are digital natives by definition, but that doesn’t mean that they
were ever taught everything (or anything, in some cases) about computers or other
technologies, or that all of them learned on their own” (Prensky, 2010, as cited in
Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).

4. Prensky’s digital native canon
In the first article on digital natives Prensky (2001a, p. 1) wrote about a singularity, an event
that fundamentally changed things. It stated that the current educational system is ill
prepared for this new generation of learner.
This argument is supported by facts and figures, such as students spend less than 5,000
hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games, 20,000 hours
watching television. And also provided similar statistics about Instant messages (IMs) sent,
use of(digital) cellphones and email sent. This statistics was supported by other digital
native author’s writings, regardless of socioeconomic background and country of origin of
the digital natives.

5. Prensky’s digital native canon
Prensky (2001b)stated that digital natives prefer images over text, games over
“serious work,” and function best when networked. These digital natives have skills,
with digital technologies. Transferring their skills to academic context, both the digital
natives and digital immigrants can’t pay attention and finally become doodled, dazed
and day dream when they are bored.
Prensky (2001b) argues that in a technology-infused environment the brain will adapt
to use the tools that are available in that setting. However digital natives should also
exploit the physical ability, to learn to function in environments that don’t have the
necessary tools. Moreover the technology use among the digital native population did
not consider pedagogy, what is good for learners but change for the sake of changing;
or the technological equivalent of “throwing money at the educational problem”.

6. Addenda and Extensions to the Canon
Using the Google search engine does not mean that students possess the
critical literacy and information literacy required to find which results are
quality search results (Oblinger, 2005).
Digital natives are “Nintendo over logic,” which states that this generation
doesn’t read manuals and prefers a trial and error approach, as one might find
in a video game (Frand, 2000, p. 17). These traits are inherent in humans as a
whole, and everything else is just a tool to utilise.
Another trait ascribed to digital natives is that they are multitaskers, moreover
they are efficient at it, and it is technology that encourages this multitasking
(Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 527).

7. Straight from the Digital Natives
Technology means “Reformatting my computer system and installing cutting-
edge software that allows me to do what I want, when I want, without
restrictions, viruses, and the rules of Bill Gates, ” and “The ability to adapt and
configure an already established program to *something that+ benefits me daily.”
(Roberts, 2005, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 528).
Digital natives are described as striving “to stay ahead of the technology curve in
ways that often exhaust older generations,” and to achieve this they “rarely pick
up the instruction pack to learn programming or a technique. Instead, spurred
by our youthful exploration of the Internet, we tend to learn things ourselves, to
experiment with new technology until we get it right, and to build by touch
rather than tutorial” (Windham, 2005, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 528).

8. Demographics Matter
There are many variables that creates the stereotypical digital native. Location and
socioeconomic status is important. How much one uses a certain tool or
technologies, and what for they use it are necessary factors; and how well these
skills and behaviours are transferred over into educational domains is important
(Koutropoulos, 2011, pp. 528-529).
Socioeconomic factors, as well as other factors such as race, gender and
educational background play an important role in how and how much people use
technology (Broos & Roe, 2006, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 529).

9. Access to Utilization and Quality of Engagement
Having a generation “bathed in bits”, (Tapscott, 1999, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p.
529) access and utilisation of technology in both quality and quantity matters, when the
technological engagement of these digital natives are measured.
In Australia a study showed that only 15% of the digital natives were “power users” and
45% were rudimentary technology users (Kennedy et al., 2010, as cited in Koutropoulos,
2011, p. 530).
Considering the claims of digital native evangelists at face value, one might think that all
of them are power users; that they are indeed media producers, who collaborate often
with great skill. However statistics from a variety of studies show a different picture; the
fact is that the average “digital native” entering college is not technologically
sophisticated to become a power user.

10. Personal Technology and the Leap to Educational Technology
Two factors have to be considered even when technology is used for personal use.
First is to examine student motivations and perceptions as to what constitutes
instruction. Student’s perceptions of education were fairly traditional. They prefer to be
lead by a subject matter expert. So technology isn’t necessarily ruled out, however it
needs to be tied into the subject of the class (Lohnes & Kinzer, 2007, as cited in
Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 530).
The second factor is the perception of the space: is it a private space or a public space?
Students are reluctant to mix their private sphere, exemplified by the use of services like
facebook and instant messaging, with the classroom sphere. Thus “Collaboration and
collaborative learning did not seem to be a strong feature of the students’ experience at
university and the kinds of social networking that was done was mainly informal and
largely unrelated to formal learning” (Jones & Romanau, 2009, as cited in Koutropoulos,
2011, p. 530).

11. Locus of Control
Quantitative studies show that students have the skills that they need, however
qualitative data contradicts the quantitative data. Students only have very basic office
suite skills. Puzzled by technology, some are afraid to experiment fearing that they will
break the computer (Kvavik, 2005 as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).
The non-digital native older students have more proficiency in technology. Access to
computers, time, and lack of confidence has an effect on computer literacy (Eynon,
2010, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531).
Educators and parents have a tacit expectation that kids will engage spontaneously,
with schooled interests on computers. If computer access and behaviours are controlled
externally (Kerwalla & Crook, 2002, as cited in Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 531) it will limit
the learning of learners.

12. Discussion
Group A: How does the Nintendo game help in identifying the directions
and intense contradictory data?
Group B: How can the digital natives break the computer without physical
damage?
Group C: What strategies could be used to collaborate the digital natives
and the digital immigrants?
To the class: What are the impacts of being power users for students of the
digital native generation?

13. Conclusion
In the past ten years, lots of articles have been written by many authors about how to
reach out and how to teach these so-called digital natives.
Teachers have to focus on proper pedagogy. Especially in exposing students to
information retrieval and critical information analysis skills, both in the digital and the
analog realms. Teach students to change their approach of learning, instead of assuming
that they possess “Nintendo over logic” concept, which enables them to modify their
learning plans when things are not working out (Koutropoulos, 2011, p. 532).

14. References
Frand, J. L. (2000). The information-age mindset. Educause Review, 35(5), 14-24. Retrieved April
15,2013 from http://net.educause.edu/apps/er/erm00/articles005/erm0051.pdf
Koutropoulos, A. (2011). Digital Natives: Ten Years After. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and
Teaching, 7(4), 525-538.
Oblinger, D. G. (2005). Learners, Learning & Technology: The Educause Learning Initiative. Educause
Review, 40(5), 66-75. Retrieved April 17, 2013, from
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0554.pdf
Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital natives, Digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently? On
the Horizon, 9(6). Retrieved April 15, 2013, from
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-
%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part2.pdf