Digital Natives & Immigrants

Marc Prensky, who coined the terms "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants," explains how technology has impacted education as far as students and educators.  A "Digital Native" is someone who came up in the technology generation, is more savvy with technology, and spends lots of time on a phone, computer, tablet, etc.  I like to use my niece and nephews for an example.  Both my niece and nephew use tablets to learn with in school, have had smartphones since the ages of 9 or 10, and know more about what I can do with my iPhone than I do.  A "Digital Immigrant" would be someone who came up before the technology generation and was not taught with technology in school and basically was quite used to a real deal pencil and paper.  These people are adapting to the new digital world and may have smartphones and use technology, but can still be stuck in their old ways.  One example I liked that Prensky used was how they may print a paper off in order to edit it by writing on it instead of just editing it on the computer.  

When you have a digital immigrant as a teacher and a class full of digital natives, learning can be rather difficult if the digital immigrant doesn't adapt well enough to be able to relate to their students. One example I can think of with this is a biology teacher I had when I was in community college.  He didn't do anything with computers or really come up with tech savvy ways to get students more involved.  The class was boring and being able to pay attention was a challenge.  However, I had another teacher who knew exactly how to keep the students involved and find ways to keep us learning, while also keeping our attention.  He would find interesting YouTube clips or show pictures as examples.  He would even have everyone log onto a website with their phones and then would get the website up on the screen and we would all play a quiz game, it was fun and helped us remember what we were learning.  

I would have to say I fall into the Digital Native category.  Unfortunately, I do everything on my phone, I would be lost if it weren't for browsing the internet for sources for school work and research.  If I had to go into a real library and search for books for a research project, I would probably fail!  I even started doing bank deposits on my phone because I was too lazy to go into the actual bank to deposit a check.  I feel like that sums up how digital natives think, not saying they are lazy, but much more tech savvy, where as my mom would say "I don't even know how to log onto my bank on my phone, I'm going to the bank!"  She is a very good example of a digital immigrant.  

I've included a  link that discusses some cool things about digital natives and how their technologically savvy ways can prevent online fraud and other interesting things. 

https://blog.sift.com/10-things-need-know-digital-natives/

Sources:

Prensky, Marc. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants from On the Horizon. October 2001. Vol. 9. 

Ramzipoor, Roxanne. 10 Things You Need to Know about Digital Natives. Sift. May 9 2017. Accessed February 3 2024. https://blog.sift.com/10-things-need-know-digital-natives/.