Thursday, August 5, 2010

Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives

Our blackboard discussion on "teaching an old dog new tricks" inspired me to research digital immigrants a bit more. I came across a pretty cool article that describes both digital natives and digital immigrants...and discusses how to bridge the gap between the two.

The author references Marc Prensky, who provides what I think is a good description of the two. He describes digital natives as people who are used to receiving information really fast and who multi-task. He also gives a digital immigrant as one who would, for example, print a digital document to edit it rather than doing so online.

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

2 comments:

  1. Ashleigh,

    I edit documents online and also print them and edit. Where do I fall in the digital world? A naturalized citizen?

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  2. Haha! Yes, John. That's a good term to describe users such as yourself! :) I am the same way - it depends on the document.

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