Digital Wisdom: A Necessary Faculty Competency? (Teaching with Technology/Emerging Technologies‪)‬

IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A DECADE since Marc Prensky wrote about digital natives and digital immigrants (2001 a, 2001 b). In these initial writings, Prensky compared digital natives, that generation that grew up with technology, with digital immigrants, those who had not grown up with technology. A few years earlier, Tapscott (I 998) introduced the digital generation, and described how adolescents were different in a variety of traits. Howe and Strauss (2000) also wrote about Millennials and their need for a different type of educational experience. Oblinger and Oblinger (2005) edited an entire online textbook on educating the Net generation. Some (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2007; Hoover, 2009; Margaryan & Littlejohn, 2008) have debated the validity of these descriptions of the Millennial, Net, and digital generations. They postulated that the evidence does not exist to support the claims that were being made: "We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic.' We propose a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate 'digital native' and their implication for education" In an examination of the Millennial muddle from a student affairs perspective, Hoover (2009) in essence noted that many, like Howe and Strauss (2000), have created a substantive and lucrative business model to help people understand the Millennial student, worker, and citizen.