Prensky believes that having grown up in the digital age, digital natives are accustomed to working with asynchronous communications, with email being the primary example, even though much of the communication technologies available today are synchronous, such as cell phones and instant messaging. The point Prensky attempts to make is digital natives are accustomed to being connected or networked, and as a result, are capable of utilizing technologies which prior generations would not think of. Examples include posting a question to a forum, as opposed to making a phone call and a leaving message.
Published in Chapter:
Digital Propensity: An Investigation of Video Game and Information and Communication Technology Practices
Boaventura DaCosta (Solers Research Group, USA), Angelique Nasah (Solers Research Group, USA),
Carolyn Kinsell (Solers Research Group, USA), and Soonhwa Seok (The Center for Research on Learning—eLearning Design Lab, University of Kansas, USA)
Copyright: © 2011
|Pages: 26
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-495-0.ch052
Abstract
There is a growing interest among educators to use video games in the classroom as part of the curriculum to meet the educational needs of today’s students. This may be justified, in part, by claims in recent years about today’s technology-savvy students and their adept use of information and communication technology (ICT). However, such claims have not been accepted without scrutiny; indeed, the relationship between games and learning has been tempestuous over the years. This chapter sought to identify the gaming propensity of postsecondary students (N = 580) through the use of a questionnaire. Age, gender, and socioeconomic status were examined as factors that might explain why students play games. Results suggest that age, gender, and socioeconomic status are composite factors that contribute to gaming, but not the most important consideration in terms of general ICT usage. The findings raise a number of implications for educators, educational policy-makers, practitioners, researchers, instructional technologists, and game developers across both the education spectrum and the entertainment industry in terms of the use and development of video games.