Native vs. Immigrant

 

Mark Prensky believes that there are two types of people in the digital age.  Digital natives are young people that are born into a world of technology and immersed in it.  Due to the fact that they are immersed in technology, digital natives have an easier time with technology.  Digital immigrants are older people that, due to the fact that they were not born into the current technological age, have a more difficult time with technology.  

Danah Boyd believes that it is not as clear cut as using blanket terms for how people respond to technology.  Boyd believes that "The notion of digital native, whether constructed positively or negatively, has serious unintended consequences.  Not only is it fraught, but it obscures the uneven distribution of technological skills and media literacy across the youth population, presenting an inaccurate portrait of young people as uniformly prepared for the digital era and ignoring the assumed level of privilege to be 'native.'" (p. 180) She goes on to explain that the issue more directly lies with digital competence.

When I was growing up, I listened to vinyl, cassettes and eventually CD's.  My computer was a Commodore 64 in which I had to type lines of code taken out of a magazine and record it onto a cassette tape to get even the most minor or tasks accomplished.  My mobile phone...did not exist.  I played Pong (note the first site on Google that shows up to play the replicated game is on the AARP website) and Atari 2600 for fun.  My television was big and boxy.  I am forty-nine and I do not have Tik Tok on my phone.

I should, if you listen to the theory of Mark Prensky, be somewhat incapable of using technology.  That said, I worked in marketing for over twenty years.  I have taught myself (and watched YouTube tutorials on) everything from Photoshop to web design to InDesign.  My running comment was that I was a "jack of all trades and master of none", but that I knew just enough to be dangerous.

Prensky believes that youth are capable of doing almost anything with technology, while Boyd believes that these things shouldn't be generalized and that most of this comes down to digital competence and access to technology.

I side with Boyd.  I have a difficult time with generalities.  In Prensky's world I would just be an outlier, but I believe there are many people that are older that can utilize technology.  In the classroom I consider myself (as per Noon's 4 Tier Model of Teacher Training in Technology) a techno-traditionalist trying to move his way to a techno-constructivist.

When I look at my class, I see nine and ten-year-old children that are capable of using their phones and the apps that are on them, but the minute I place them onto a Chromebook to go to Google Classroom for an assignment they are lost.  The majority of the students in my class do not have computers in their homes.  They live on phones and tablets.  There is a degree of inherent knowledge in their use of technology (being digital natives), but because they don't have access to computers, they are as lost as digital immigrants in some ways.

It is important to look at a person's knowledge of technology on an individual basis.  Sir Ken Robinson discussed how education needs to be individualized, so does technology education and competence.  Every person is different in both what they have knowledge of and what they need to gain knowledge of.