book chapter: Dancing with digital natives

Dancing with digital natives: Staying in step with the generation that's transforming the way business is done

Michelle Manafy and Heidi Gautschi, editors

published by Information Today Inc., 2011

page count: 22

Ironically I began with the last chapter in this edited book about today's students who are, to use Prensky's phrase, digital natives. Dr. Mary Ann Bell contributed the chapter titled "Native knowledge: Knowing what they know -- and learning how to teach them the rest" (pp. 351-372). 


Bell points out that while our students are comfortable with technology and are avid learners of new stuff, they don't know it all. In particular, we need to focus on teaching our students

• respect for intellectual property, 
• Internet searching skills,
• evaluation of Internet information, and
• online safety.

In what she calls "a woeful abdication of responsibility" (p. 356), the adults who lead the digital natives have failed to teach and model these skills.

Bell also poses a telling argument against filtering that serves in place of teaching students to self-monitor and exercise caution. In fact, I am going to move next to read The filter bubble by Parisi. It deals with broad-scale Internet filtering, and I want to mentally compare and contrast the book with this chapter's words.


You know how it sometimes happens that, out of the blue, you read something unexpected, and the concept perceptibly shifts your life course? A convergence of several unusual events in my lift came together as I read this chapter. I think the reading will be visible as a turning point when I look back ten years in the future.