Wenger and Prensky

Wenger and Prensky both have similar views on education and learning by using the internet. Wengers notion of communities of practise states that people can progress and learn together within an online community where as Prensky feels that the new age student heavily relies on the internet and new technology in thier process of learning therefore these two theories are connected.

Prensky argues that digital natives have a whole new way of learning and understanding due to the introduction of new technology. In referring to digital natives, Prensky says, '...we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed', he continues on to say, 'Digital Natives are used to recieving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite'. This demonstrates that he believes that this new generation basically live their lives in the web.

Wenger says ' Communities of practise are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor', which suggests that Prensky's 'digital natives' are involved in a global community of practise without knowing so, being the entire world wide web as a source of information for all.

As you can see, Wenger and Prenskys theories relate to eachother as digital natives way of learning described by Prensky suggests that they are involed in many communities of practise, whether being web forums, blogs and it could be argued that this advancement of the use of the internet can classify the internet as a whole as a massive community of practise.