"I'm sorry, but I don't go for all this digital natives and immigrants stuff when it comes to this: I don't know anything about the internal combustion engine, but I know it's pretty dangerous to wander about on the road, so I've learnt to handle myself safely when I need to get from one side of the road to the other.
The phrase may have been useful to start with, but it's been over-used for a long time now. In any case, after immigrants have been in a country for a while, they become natives. We've had personal computers for 30 years, and I was using computers in my teaching back in 1975. How long does it take for someone to wake up to the fact that technology is part of life, not an add-on?
Quoted from Karl FischÃs Blog on
http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-it-okay-to-be-technologically.html
I understand the push to have digital immigrants learn and speak as a digital native. I think the value of the terms remain in needing digital immigrants to be willing or want to learn to speak "digital."
I like the analogy of knowing how to behave safely even if you don't understand the internal workings. †As adults and especially as parents we need to know to behave safely ourselves and how to teach others to behave safely.
A personal pet peeve is watching parents of young children either drag or push in a stroller their children across streets while not at an intersection. The habits we teach from our modeling impact children.
I argue that while digital immigrants can learn the language they may always have differences between digital natives, but those differences (or accents) do not need to stop communication or learning.
Kevin
No comments:
Post a Comment