Digital Immigrant

Several interesting ideas have arisen for me during the course. Such as discovering that I am a ‘digital immigrant’ (Prensky, 2001), and this came as somewhat of a surprise. As I have said previously I do consider myself computer literate, and even in the presence of IT people can hold my own, offer innovations, and solutions they have not considered. So this revelation stung, somewhat. Just because I was not born into the generation using computers before they could walk, does not mean I have an ‘accent’ (Prensky, 2001) as Prensky says!


Well, actually, yes it does. I have examined his premise, and much as I hate to admit it, I believe he is partially correct. While I do not print out emails to read them, I do prefer to edit my documents on paper rather than on screen (my excuse is my appalling eye sight) and really, I only do that for long documents! But I believe that my digital accent is not as pronounced as Prensky would have us believe.

Prensky asserts that digital immigrants cannot successfully learn anything while watching TV or listening to music, and that the instantaneity of being networked is a domain of the digital native. This is where my view diverges form Prensky’s. Myself and many of my contemporaries have been exposed to the information technology from our teenage or early adult years. We can learn while watching TV and some of us prefer to learn while listening to music. Our early learning may have been based on ‘legacy content’ systems (Prensky, 2001) however we have had to adapt to live and learn in both environments – legacy and digital.

Prensky’s premise that everyone is either a ‘digital native’ or ‘digital immigrant’ doesn’t ring true. I believe there is a third group – that truly bridges both groups. That is the immigrant who became exposed to the information technology during their teenage years or in early adulthood. These people are comfortable with many aspects of information technology, and yet their formal education was legacy based. These people are more flexible than Prensky gives them credit for, as they are the ones who have enabled the technological changes to be introduced, and they are the ones who must help the real immigrants pass their knowledge and skills onto the digital natives.

Prensky believes that as time passes the distinction between digital native and immigrant becomes less important and that digital wisdom is the next step. To improve our minds, we are all going to use digital enhancements, the very real issues of how we become digitally wise, ethically and morally needs to consider when looking towards the future (Prensky, 2009). This Prensky asserts is our next digital challenge.

References

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-6.

Prensky, M. (2009). H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom. Innovate: journal of online education, 5, 9.