Week 8 - What Is Digital Immigration

After looking at many different articles on 'digital immigration' i now can try and explain the concept in my own words. An 'immigrant' is a person that has moved someone new and so has to adapt (assimilate) to their surroundings. A 'digital immigrant' an analogy which shows how a person has to adapt not to surroundings but to technological changes. These are people who were born prior to 1980. These people don't find technology natural, and they have still have various accents, Prensky, a main contributer to 'digital immigration' says that a person with a 'thick accent', would ring someone up and ask if they had received their email.

On the other hand, there's the 'digital natives', people who were born between 1980 -1994. They have grown up with technology, they understand text message language, they can multitask and find technology natural to them.

Marc Prenksy uses these two concepts within the education system and says how the teachers are 'digital immigrants' and teaching 'digital natives' with different needs and therefore these teachers need to change their approach to teaching these kids, otherwise they'll become 'bored'. These teachers focus on step by step approaches, an array of textbooks which don't fit in with todays kids.

The main debate over digital natives is based on two key claims

1. that a distinct generation of 'digital natives' exist
2. that education must be changed to meet the needs of the 'natives'

There has been many different approaches to Prensky's concepts. Bennett, Maton & Kervin (2008) state how its merely a moral panic. Based on Cohen 1972, they describe how a concensus has been made that these 'native' school kids need a change in education style, without any arguments being made. As there's not much evidence to back up what Marc Prensky suggests.

Whilst looking at Prensky's concept i thought how much of what he was saying may have been relevant at the time, but now i think its become outdated. It says that 'digital immigrants' are people who were born before 1980. Nowadays i think there's an array of people who are able to use technology just as well as people who may be considered 'digital natives'. Personally i think, Prensky persumes that these 'natives' all had access to these technlogies. What if a child was born between 1980 and 1994, but didnt come into contact with technology and to this day doesn't have a wide knowledge. Ultimately, this would suggest that their traits are somewhat like a 'digital immigrant'. I think Prensky should allow more leverage. There's some people that could be hard to place. I know some adults who can use technlogy better than i can.

Im not dismissing Prensky, but i think that you cant just take what he says at face value. I think Dave Kenyon said the other day that we've been the best group so far to take this unit (maybe not me lol) and he suggested how it might have been because we have more knowledge of how to use the internet, compared to previous years. This could possibly be linked back to Prensky, maybe we are more 'native' than others, i just dont think that someone should be defined exclusively as a 'digital native' or 'a digital immigrant' because of age, i think it just depends on the individual, whether they've had access to technology, wheher they prefer old technology to new etc.