Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants... .

CEO Ryan Pinto Felicitates Mukesh Sharma

Siddhartha Mukherjee, Mukesh Sharma , Anil Wanwari

  With a motive to bring about changes in the existing educational system and to provide quality education to students, Ryan International Group of Institutions hosted the ASISC Conference, a three day event from 24th Nov. to 26th Nov. 2010, inviting nearly 1200 ICSE school  principals from all over India at Renaissance convention centre, Mumbai.The Conference was inaugurated by the. Governor of Maharashtra H.E   K.Sankaranarayanan .
Apart from various sessions involving Harsha Bhogle( on sports and; education), Dr Kiran Bedi ( for a key note address ),  a session on "Influence of Media and its implications on School Leadership"  was chaired by me. The other panelists were Anil Wanvari  (CEO Indiantelevision.com), Siddhartha Mukherjee (Sr. VP & Head of Communications TAM) & Shaji Jose(Editor, "Aspiration Unlimited") .

The connecting links between the D.Natives & D Immigrants

As the topic suggests the principals were in a media bashing mood. But ducking their googleys, I managed to survive the session, by changing the course of session without changing the topic.The principal wanted to talk about the Media Content ,whereas  I was keen to talk about the Media Tools lacking in the School education system. My concern was based on the fact that the school going children are living in two universe . At home they do multitasking & are always wired with ipods, laptops, computers, video game consoles, mp3 players, television sets etc.& are doing amazing creative work with technology, apart from their home work & school projects..In fact they spend more time with the media than any other activity other than sleeping.

A digital native with Poonam Shatrughan Sinha

 At School the universe changes to chalk ,duster, blackboard & a teacher who is not as media savvy as the children. In fact at school the Digital Natives  (Children) interact with the Digital Immigrants (teachers). So there is a big gap and this wide culminates to a  digital divide, that if not filled soon will give rise to a total disconnect between the present and past generation.
The problem with the 50 plus lot is that they are not at all comfortable with the digital technology nor they are keen to learn it. I have seen senior Govt officers, School principals having computers on their side table, which is most of the time covered with a nice cloth. The solution is to start education through computers at school.                                                                                                                  

The Digital Immigrants

But the trainer must be trained first in order to get connected. Simply by providing the new technology will not help. It should be embraced by the teacher &
should not be forced upon anyone. Media must be integrated with the curriculum. In other words curriculum needs to drive the technology and not the other way round.
Last but not the least, every medium till date what we know is on the internet right next to each other.From Print,Music, Books, Photography,Radio, Video, films subsuming all previous mediums. How long will the stake holders of our generation, continue to ignore this reality, thats a million dollar quesition.....