Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives

As an ESL teacher, I am aware that my students act as translators for their parents. I never thought that that went on in my family until I read this. At my house, cries from the study of
"Come help your idiot mother!" means that once again I am relying on my children to help me with some computer task. I went kicking and screaming into the digital age, but my children were born into it, learning computer skills from kindergarten. It comes quite naturally to them.
I am not sure if my son has actually ever read a whole book, but he is very smart, and he knows everything about history, sports, and military science. He has gotten his information from other places than I did when I was in school. My daughter is an avid reader and writer, and is also very technologically savvy. I have not seen the divide in my classroom between digital immigrants and digital natives because I teach true immigrants, who come to me with little
knowledge of technology. Most of them have cell phones, but often I am the one who shows them how to word process and get on the internet. I believe that this could change in a very short time. We have known for a long time that students learn better when they are in charge of their own learning. Digital natives are used to having access to information in their hands, and they are used to getting quick answers. There is still a lot that they can learn from digital immigrants, but the digital immigrants need to become familiar with the world, the language, and the methods of the digital native.

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