The Prensky stuff I have been doing has been planned to be researched on insurance industry professionals. When I piloted the survey instrument for the Digital Propensity Index to a sample of the professionals I had planned on surveying, I only had a 0.4% response rate compared to over 4% for undergrads, 10% for the graduate students, and over an estimated 30% for instructional technology cohort, using the same contact emails. It may be time to re-review the Dillman TDM for the 2007 update on doing surveys. I may also need to ask Howard at CHL Marketing in person if I could use his list of customers as contacts.

The idea behind piloting to the insurance professionals, even though I wanted to save them for my dissertation, was to make sure the DPI questionnaire was valid for them. Unfortunately, I probably will not make that discovery, nor will I get enough responses in my dissertation, using that audience and a quantitative method, to graduate. That may mean it is time to open my realm of considerations to a more mixed-method type of survey.

Dr. Hirumi forwarded an email to the Instructional Technology listserv about a researcher in the UK who is expanding on Prensky's research, and bringing it to the attention of government. Though I thought some of the comments in the article were made for flash and drama, it still had very little real evidence to explain the differences between Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives.

The article discussed having children get more exercise to release good chemicals in the brain. One of the points said children play games before going to sleep, which releases chemicals in the brain to keep them awake longer when they actually do try to fall asleep, then suffer in school from sleep deprivation. While that doesn't have anything to do per say with instructional technology or the design of instruction, it is a notable point of interest to not have your kids playing games right before they go to bed. In fact, I fail to see why any of the article is related to the design of instruction.

Preliminary findings appear to show comments on the following items related to technology, electronics, and digital toys:

A recurring theme is how Digital Immigrants use electronics for task completion, whereas Digital Natives additionally use electronics for entertainment.

One downside of interviewing people already potentially familiar with Prensky is how one person preferred to argue with how I asked questions and my use of "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant," rather than just answer as I had asked.

I noted one respondent age 60+ said "old school" college processors will deliver course materials as "force fed, instructor delivered, and stale." If older people are truly Immigrants, should they think instruction is stale, even if it is their preference?