- Questions 1 and 2
In this weeks readings we learned the difference in digital immigrants and digital natives. Although this sounds like how immigrants use technology different from native people in a specific country it actually refers to how ones experience in the digital era differs depending on the time someone grew up. A digital immigrant refers to people who did not grow up with internet but are people who saw the internet come to be, and had to adapt to the way it changed the way people learn. Due to this distinction these people had to learn the internet and incorporate it in ways that worked for them at the time everything was changing. Somethings include, printing hard copies to make edits on assignments. Prenskey referred to these things as an “accents” but really its just the way older generations were taught to utilize a computer for their studies as opposed to millennial's or people my age. The divide refers to the way older generations relationship with the internet affects the way they teach the modern generation information. Not only that but it involves their judgement of how younger generations absorb information. Based on Prenskeys findings, many of the digital immigrants think that old school methods of teaching can still be utilized and are better for the mind. Which Im sure is true to some extent, for example I will probably always be a traditional note taker yet, I have to be able to take what I learn in a “traditional way” and apply it to a digital platform to do my assignments. That is something I’ve probably had to learn to do when they first taught me how to make a power point in 5th grade. Needless to say processing information digitally is not a problem since I’ve been doing it forever. I think this divide comes from the fact that “digital immigrants” think traditional learning methods are better because that's how they process information and that's what works for them without considering like the article said, digital natives learn completely different from them due to early exposure of the internet and learning how to learn on a computer at a young age. Anyone born in the late 80's through the 90's had at least one educational 4 disk computer game that their parents bought for them. I grew up on those types of games, and I doubt my mother thought it was making my ability to learn any worse then if she didn’t buy those games for me. My point is digital learning is something most digital natives are highly comfortable with and it doesn’t make sense for the push back from the “ digital immigrants”.
As being someone who is a digital native, I remember seeing this divide among educators and students as I was getting ready to graduate high school. I remember having teachers being very anti-online schooling, and remembering them not appreciating students going from truly traditional methods of learning to the technologically advanced way. I even remember asking my teacher why she felt that way and she said “ Because people don’t learn the same way in front of a screen as they do not being in front of a screen” and I remember saying “Yeah but were use to its not a new way of learning to us” she did not agree. Well id say I was right considering I am completing a bachelors degree online and feel comfortable doing everything digitally in fact I prefer it. I mean “digital immigrants” can have those opinions but at the end of the day they’re the ones that are going to have to adapt to a constantly changing technological world. They're the ones that have to learn how to teach using virtual methods not the other way around. I mean if this pandemic has taught us anything most kids K - 12 are probably going to learn online majority of their lives they’re not even going to remember the switch from traditional methods to ipads in every room. All they're going to remember is Ipads in every room and doing kindergarten through zoom. Take that however you want but the fact is it is what it is, and its not going to be surprising if most of those kids from this pandemic do their degrees online as well. Being a digital native, I just don’t see how being anti or disagreeing with the way people obtain information is going to change the way digital natives learn. Although, I am probably bias because I am a digital native I found this video online that explains the positives and negatives of being a digital native. The video also explains how being a digital immigrant has its advantages and finishes with how no matter where you fit in the digital era we can all benefit from disconnecting once and a while which I agree with.
