Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

Digital Natives are children of today whom their teachers (known as the digital immigrants) characterise as having short attention span, problems with reading and thinking, and do not like doing practices. But research has found the meaningful explanations for these:
They have short attention span only “for old ways of learning” because they choose to pay attention to things that they feel is important can help achieve success in their areas of interest like gaming on which they can spent hours on.
They learn better through digital game-based learning but many educators are not ready or savvy enough for that.
As mentioned by Marc Prensky (2001) in his article, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II:Do They Really Think Differently?
Digital Natives are accustomed to the twitch-speed, multitasking, random-access, graphics-first, active, connected, fun, fantasy, quick-payoff world of their video games, MTV, and Internet are bored by most of today’s education. The cognitive differences of the Digital Natives cry out for new approaches to education with a better ―fit. And, interestingly enough, it turns out that one of the few structures capable of meeting the Digital Natives’ changing learning needs and requirements is the very video and computer games they so enjoy. This is why ―Digital Game-Based Learning is beginning to emerge and thrive (p.5).
A good example of a Digital Native is Cameron, an 11 year old boy from Indiana,an avid gamer and talented young digital video producer. He has successfully created his very own ‘green screen’ so that he can use the chroma key technique in his digital videos.
According to Wikipedia...
Chroma key is a technique for mixing two images or frames together, in which a color (or a small color range) from one image is removed (or made transparent), revealing another image behind it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key).

Cameron’s digital background is no different from his Singaporean counterpart. Cameron was introduced to computer games at a young age, owns quite a number of digital gadget; hp, laptop and iPod, spends hours on the computer and is quite verse in a number of software application.
So teachers must be prepared...
According to Marc Prensky (2001), “One of the most interesting challenges and opportunities in teaching Digital Natives is to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning (either built into the instruction or through a process of instructor-led debriefing) but still do it in the Digital Native language (p.5).”
Teachers may allow students to explore with online materials example suggested websites and online games, to introduce a lesson, allow the use of mind mapping tool, wikis, blogs and other tools to collate information and present materials using online or computer applications. Game-based learning is the right way but “they must be real games, not just drill with eye-candy, combined creatively with real content” (Prensky, 2001). Games consols like PlayStation, Wii and Xbox, when used the right way can make learning incidental yet significant.