Where I think these terms are being superseded or not, the terms ‘Digital Immigrant’, ‘Digital Native’ – or even ‘Digital Alien’ for those who refuse to engage – continues to be used. I’m currently checking out Kenneth Fee’s “Delivering E-Learning“, and was interested to see how he identified some small differences (p3):
Digital Immigrant
- Looks for phone number in a directory
- Prints off e-mails
- Writes a letter
- Makes a note of URLS
Digital Native
- Looks for a phone number on the web
- Subscribes to online magazines
- Sends an e-mail
- Saves URLs to his/her favourites.
I always find this interesting, as what is it that differentiates people – at the end of the day we’re still human, but the tools we’re familiar with DO change the way we behave (just think how many times we say “what did we do before mobile phones”… probably turn up on time & in the place originally planned… but how dull is that?!)
4 replies on “Digital Immigrant vs Digital Native”
Nice intro to Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. I’ve been looking into this difference quite alot recently- ever since my Grandmother asked me why I’m not on Twitter. Here is a link to my blog post on it.
http://randomponderingsofastudent.blogspot.com/2010/07/digital-native-vs-digital-immigrants.html
Really interesting, so have linked from a blog post, just up. Let me know if all OK!
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