Wes Fryer is at it again, he took the Prensky article, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” and took a look at the digital landscape today. He looks at five different groups: The Natives, The Immigrants, The Refugees, The Bridges, and The Undecided. I feel like I’m more of a native than I’m an immigrant but having both feet in each I guess I fall in the bridges category.
David Warlick has challenged us to “stop acting like immigrants and start acting like natives.” We need to minimize the refugees group and try to move them (a lot like MLR work) to undecided or to immigrant status
Wes clarified his thinking further next day in a posting on his blog. He looked at the dichotomy of the digital native/immigrant. My take within the dichotomy is that is not enough to know about the technology but to keep pushing to use the technology. The ever changing world of technology makes it hard to keep up but for the natives they don’t see it as keeping up but as discovering new frontiers.
technorati tags:edtech, literacy
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4 responses so far ↓
I am definitely a native - but I’m mostly designing projects and services for immigrants, voyeurs and refugees. So I guess this makes me a bridging native!
That is an interesting concept Alexa because not all natives use the technology. My youngest is not interested in computers at all. Do we need to be planning around immigrants and push the natives further?
As fast as technologies change, I think we need to be careful of the native / immigrant labels. This is definitely a worthwhile metaphor to discuss, but I do think that we need to avoid it becoming an excuse for not engaging with new digital tools. I think that is what David Warlick was getting at in his exhortation for us to “stop acting like natives.” My sister-in-law decided this weekend to setup a MySpace site so she can be more aware of conversations her high school daughter and friends are having. That is an example of not acting like an immigrant, I think. I think someone’s place on the “continuum” is more an attitude that a characteristic of age.
I hear what your saying Wes about the continuum being more about characteristics than age and I agree. I feel that understanding the labels makes the job easier in moving people along the continuum. It is similar to the Myers-Briggs personality types, if we don’t but some labels to it how can we best understand their strengths and weaknesses versus using the label to make excuses?
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