Wenger and Prensky's Theories

Prensky’s ideas of the ‘digital divide’ lend to his notion on education. He believes that education is in need of a reform due to the young generation becoming increasingly good with technology. Education, in his mind, is lacking in teaching this new generation or the ‘digital natives’ what they need to learn in order to improve on their digital minds.

Wenger’s ideas of Communities of Practice (CofP) see groups of people forming and belonging to certain groups. When considering Prensky’s theory in relation to Wenger’s ideas we can see that CofP are formed between the digital natives and the digital immigrants.

There are many CofP which go against Prensky’s theory of the digital divide however. For example, sport groups, social and family groups etc can all contain members who belong to the two separate digital groups. My family is a CofP where we have “relationships which bind us together” and we share a “mutual engagement”, however, we are made up of two digital immigrants and two digital natives.

However, when the theory of CofP is placed into the education theory, Prensky shows the divide between those who are digitally aware and those who are not, the students and the teachers. In education a CofP is born, in the school, in classes and in particular friendship groups. CofP are also born between teachers and between students, forcing the two groups to have their own CofP due to the digital divide.