Week 8 Digital Immigration

When researching about digital immagration i found two interesting websites that i found interesting and collected most of my information from. Both of them have the title 'Digital natives, Digital immigrants'

http://www.wisc.edu/depd/html/TSarticles/Digital%20Natives.htm

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

According to Marc prensky who appears as the main man with the knowlegde and ideas in both these websites states that "The native/immigrant analogy can help us understand the differences between those who are comfortable with technology and those who are not"


Digital immigrants are those not born into the digital world, but have at some point in our lives, become facinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology. Unlike Digital natives however who are used to recieving information really fast and like to parallell process and multy task. They are extremely literate in the new digiatl language of today.(Prensky M 2001). For example students,young adults and teenagers today would be classed as digital naitives as they are familiar with new technology. It plays a big role in their lives and they are always using it to communicate with people and for education purposes etc. They rely upon technology a lot and have been brought up with all the latest technology like the internet, mobile phones, ipods etc. Whereas Digital Immigrants are those who havn't really been brought up with this type of technology take your parents or grandparents for example who didn't grow up in a society where technology was well advanced the internet wasn't available and neither were things like mobile phones. They have had to learn and start adapting to this new technology. Which often can be very hard and challenging for many hence why as Marc prensky describes that even if they try to keep up with the advances in new technology they still mite have 'Digital immigrant accent'. For instance they mite print out a digital document to edit rather than just editing it online.(Prensky M 2001)
My mum for example had to learn how to use a computer because of the job she is in she needed to be familiar in using one as it is part of her job. She isnt very good with computers because she hasnt been brought up with them and never really used them in schools making her a digital immigrant but she had to adapt to this new technology however she is still not very good and on them like she can't type very fast etc so she still has 'digital immigrant accent'.

Prenksy also talks about how how students and young adults today at university and college etc are people who our educational system are no longer able to teach. The point he is trying to make is the fact that digital natives education is suffering as these people in the educational sysytem who are digital immigrants "speak an outdated language and are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely different language" (Prensky m 2001)

The education sytem are the ones that care about the digital devide between students (natives) and the teachers/lectures (immigrants) as they are more likely to be comfortable and familiar with teaching the traditional way that they were brought up which isnt around new technology that is popular today. Where as students are been brought up around this new technology and are very familiar with using it so want to learn through this. Which raises the question is this effecting our education as we are not learning the way we should be in todays advanced society? Or should we not rely on technology all the time?

For example students today when learning are happy to do all there research on the internet gathering information from certain websites. However they are encouraged by the educational system to go to the library and use books and journals to help them learn not just the internet.
I know when i am at home and am researching work through the internet using web searchers like google or yahoo to look up information my mum says to me i could never just get on a computer log on the internet and go to a search engine to do research i had to go to the library and find books.