The idea was that a Digital Native is used to describe a person born into technology, e,g: 1990 onwards. Those who were around for the introduction of 3d games, the switch between dialup and broadband and so on and so forth. A Digital Immigrant, however, is used to describe somebody who did not grow up with such technologies and jumped on the bandwagon miles after it had departed the station. this for example could include your mother, whose perpetual difficulty with sending and receiving emails might annoy you at times, or your father who thinks that(and i quote) “the number 2 should be introduced into binary to speed things up a bit” (no pun intended).
I read this article by Marc Prensky recently and it got me thinking. Is the web designed for the Digital Native? Does a Digital Native necessarily describe all younger people of today’s generation?
I am a digital native, this much I know, and what Marc kindly pointed out is that my generation are experiencing a revolutionary leap forward in technology, for example. The problems that come with this are as follows:
We are a very different race to your common-garden teenagers of yester-year. In a case study i recently read, it was revealed that your average gamer has 0.25 faster reaction times and up to 3 times better vision than your average Joe from the 80s. Prensky seems to think that we will learn better with the use of interactive games, I personally agree with him. But leave it to a Digital Native to decide how best to teach a Digital Native.
This brings up another problem. When my generation grows up and become teachers, who is to say that the next generation of students will be completely different what if there is some kind of new revolution. One day i might put it like this. “back in my day if i wanted to send someone an email, i had to type it on a keyboard”
The point is, technology is constantly moving forward. Any attempt to change the way children learn will have to change with the technology that surrounds them.
4 Responses
twiggy
August 26th, 2011 at 8:24 am
1it was very well written and it has some great points to it and i agree with most of your points.
drtech
August 28th, 2011 at 11:08 am
2Excellent post – always good if you quote statistics from somewhere else that you add a link to this source.
I do think your point is very true regarding technology always moving forward – and so you may be in the same position in a few years time inevitably. Do you think it is more to do with the mentality of each of us and how open we are to change? Does this change as we get older anyway?
cornelius
August 29th, 2011 at 10:27 am
3I think it is a possibility that when we are older that we might be put in that position. But i also think that we will be able to keep up with technology because of the way we have been raised. Since we were younger we have always wanted the next thing the better thing. Like who still has an original xbox AND plays it. So i think it could happen but we would all have to decide that ahhh my computer fine i don’t want a new one for however many years.
Intervention For Treatment Of Diabetes
August 8th, 2020 at 5:21 am
4Intervention For Treatment Of Diabetes
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. by ITGS Online
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Leave a reply
Adobe Photoshop apocalypse Book brain cells Chrome Copyright digital Digital Immigrant Digital Native Education Facebook Fats Million Firefox Google Image editing Intellectual Property ITGS Jaron Lanier Lawrence Lawrence Lessig Lessig Marc Prensky networks of people and machines Photoshop prensky Privacy Protocols rat Remix robot Schneier scientist Security Spreadsheet Trust tweets twitter warcraft world wow You Are Not A Gadget YouTube Artificial Intelligence (36)
Arts Nd Entertainment (12)
Assignment (62)
Authenticity (11)
Blogroll (3)
Business/Employment (12)
Case Study (5)
Control (14)
Database (8)
Deadlines (4)
Delicious Links (212)
Education (28)
Equality (6)
Examinations (5)
Globalisation (14)
Health (10)
Integrity (8)
Intellectual Property (17)
IT Systems (37)
ITGS (982)
Just for Fun (36)
Models and Simulations (3)
People and Machines (45)
Policues and Standards (13)
Politics and Government (13)
Portfolios (5)
Presentation No Show (7)
Privacy (30)
Quiz (1)
Reliability (24)
Science Nd Environment (8)
Security (26)
Surveillance (4)
video (3)
Web 2.0 (13)
Wiki (2)
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Recent Comments
Net Neutrality – Help Save It!
Meta
Visit Our ITGS Wiki
Welcome…
A blog to help ITGS students become independent and creative Technology thinkers - Over 10 years in action and ready for the Digital Society Revolution. Any criticisms of the weblog and its working please send me a mature comment and I will rectify it as soon as possible.
Disclaimer: if there are any problems related to copyright or fair-use please contact me immediately and I will remove the offending content from the blog. All content created by Dr Tech is under the Creative Commons License
Categories
Help Feed the World!
Open Rights Group
Archives
Recent Comments
Translate
ITGS Online is proudly powered by WordPress - Dr Tech messed with the theme created by: Design Disease