Digital native
Encyclopedia
A digital native is a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology, and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts. Alternatively, this term can describe people born in the latter 1960s
or later, as the Digital Age began at that time; but in most cases the term focuses on people who grew up with the technology that became prevalent in the latter part of the 20th century, and continues to evolve today.
Other popular discourse identifies a digital native as a person who understands the value of digital technology and uses this to seek out opportunities for implementing it with a view to make an impact.
This term has been used in several different contexts, such as education
, higher education
and in association with the term New Millennium Learners . A digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life.
As Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss (in 2009), not all digital immigrants are technologically inept, as they fall into a number of categories; Avoiders, Reluctant Adopters and Eager Adopters. Avoiders may only have a minimal amount of technology involved in their lives and households (e.g., a landline phone and a television set). Reluctant Adopters often see ways that technology might be needed in their lives, but they try to avoid it when possible (e.g., letters instead of emails, rotary telephones). Eager Adopters have enthusiasm or a talent for technology that makes them very similar to Digital Natives. Similarly, not all digital natives are comfortable with technology.
coined the term digital native in his work Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants published in 2001. In his seminal article, he assigns it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments. The term draws an analogy
to a country's natives, for whom the local religion, language, and folkways are natural and indigenous, compared with immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and begin to adopt the region's customs. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save as a hard copy. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, for instance, calling people into a room to see a webpage instead of sending them the URL. A digital native might refer to her new "camera"; but a digital immigrant might refer to his new "digital camera".
The analogy of the digital native was also used by Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan (Spear's business partner in the Manhattan-based agency Undercurrent) who talked about people who were "born digital", first appearing in a series of presentations given by Josh Spear in 2007. First, at Google's Zeitgeist Europe Conference in May 2007. A different version of this presentation was delivered again in December 2007 at the United Kingdom at the Internet Advertising Bureau Engage 2007 Conference. A Digital Native research project is being run jointly by the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen
in Switzerland. A collaborative research project is being run by Hivos, Netherlands
and the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society. The Net Generation Encountering e-learning at university project funded by the UK research councils was completed in March 2010.
Gartner
presented on the term at their May, 2007 IT Expo (Emerging Trends) Symposium in Barcelona and, more recently, Gartner referenced Prensky's work, specifically the 18 areas of change comprising the Work Style of Digital Natives, in their "IT-Based Collaboration and Social Networks Accelerate R&D" research paper published on January 22, 2008.
This creates conflicts among older supervisors and managers with the increasingly younger workforce. Similarly, parents clash with their children at home over gaming, texting, YouTube, Facebook and other Internet technology issues. What many digital immigrants miss is that digital natives grew up with technology, and it is how they connect with their friends, perform research, and feel at home. Young people are not "addicts" or "bad" simply for using the tools of the world they grow up in. In their 2011 article, Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss the issue of generation clashes at home, school and the workplace.
Education, as Marc Prensky
states, is the single largest problem facing the digital world as our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Immigrants suffer complications in teaching natives how to understand an environment which is "native" to them and foreign to Immigrants. Prensky's own preference to this problem is to invent computer games to teach digital natives the lessons they need to learn, no matter how serious. This ideology has already been introduced to a number of serious practicalities. For example, piloting an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the army consists of someone sitting in front of a computer screen issuing commands to the UAV via a hand-held controller which resembles (in detail) the model of controllers that are used to play games on an Xbox 360 game console.
(Jodie C Spreadbury, Army Recruiting and Training Division).
The term digital immigrant overlooks the fact that many people born before the digital age were the inventors, designers, developers and first users of digital technology and in this sense could be regarded as the original 'natives'. To confuse the prolific (and arguably superficial) use of digital technology by current adolescents as deep knowledge and understanding is potentially misleading and unhelpful to the discourse. The term also discounts the broader and more holistic knowledge, experience and understandings that older generations may have about digital technologies and their potential place in society.
Crucially, there is debate over whether there is any adequate evidence for claims made about digital natives and their implications for education. , for example, critically review the research evidence and describe some accounts of digital natives having an academic form of a moral panic
. Using such a terminology is rather a sign of unfamiliarity and exoticism in relation to digital culture. Of course, nobody is "born digital"; as with any cultural technology, such as reading and writing, it is matter of access to education and experience.
It considers that all youths are digital natives in the modern age. However, this is not the case. It is primarily based on cultural differences and not by age. According to Henry Jenkins (2007), "Part of the challenge of this research is to understand the dynamics of who exactly is, and who is not, a digital native, and what that means." There are underlying conflicts on the definition of the term "digital natives" and it is wrong to say that all modern age youths are placed in that particular category or that all older adults can be described as digital immigrants. Some adults are more tech savvy than a lot of children are depending on socio economic standings and other things.But as teachers we must include the world outside that the children are familiar with inside the classroom.
The formulation of digital native is also challenged by researchers looking at emerging technology landscapes. The current discourse concentrates largely on developed technology geographies and has a particular bias towards white, liberal, middle-class youth who have the privilege of access to technology. Nishant Shah (2009) says, "It is necessary to promote research that grasps that not all Digital Natives are equal. Each context will have certain norms by which digital nativity is understood and experienced. Dismantling the universal Digital Native and considering contextualised Digital Native identities might also help us move away from speaking of the Digital Native as a necessarily elite power-user of technology and understand the identity as a point of departure from earlier technology-mediated identities within those contexts." He also suggests that one way of understanding digital natives is to look at how they use digital technologies to engage with their immediate environments and initiate processes of social and personal change.
As we move into the second decade of the new millennium, others are calling into question Prensky’s Digital/Immigrant dichotomy on different grounds. recently conducted a literature review for the UK Higher Education Academy which found that there was no empirical evidence of a single new generation of young students. They argued that complex changes were taking place but there was no evidence of a generation gap. The nature of the metaphor itself is challenged, with White and Le Cornu (2011) drawing attention to the difficulties that a language-based analogy introduces, especially when then linked to age and place. They also highlight the rapid technological advances that have been made in the last ten years, most notably in the advent of social networking platforms. White and Le Cornu therefore propose an alternative metaphor of Visitors and Residents which they suggest more accurately represents the ways in which learners engage with technology in a social networking age.
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
or later, as the Digital Age began at that time; but in most cases the term focuses on people who grew up with the technology that became prevalent in the latter part of the 20th century, and continues to evolve today.
Other popular discourse identifies a digital native as a person who understands the value of digital technology and uses this to seek out opportunities for implementing it with a view to make an impact.
This term has been used in several different contexts, such as education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, higher education
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
and in association with the term New Millennium Learners . A digital immigrant is an individual who was born before the existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later in life.
As Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss (in 2009), not all digital immigrants are technologically inept, as they fall into a number of categories; Avoiders, Reluctant Adopters and Eager Adopters. Avoiders may only have a minimal amount of technology involved in their lives and households (e.g., a landline phone and a television set). Reluctant Adopters often see ways that technology might be needed in their lives, but they try to avoid it when possible (e.g., letters instead of emails, rotary telephones). Eager Adopters have enthusiasm or a talent for technology that makes them very similar to Digital Natives. Similarly, not all digital natives are comfortable with technology.
Origins
Marc PrenskyMarc Prensky
Marc Prensky is an American writer and speaker on learning and education. He is best known as the inventor and popularizer of the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" which he described in a 2001 article in ....
coined the term digital native in his work Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants published in 2001. In his seminal article, he assigns it to a new group of students enrolling in educational establishments. The term draws an analogy
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
to a country's natives, for whom the local religion, language, and folkways are natural and indigenous, compared with immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and begin to adopt the region's customs. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save as a hard copy. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, for instance, calling people into a room to see a webpage instead of sending them the URL. A digital native might refer to her new "camera"; but a digital immigrant might refer to his new "digital camera".
The analogy of the digital native was also used by Josh Spear and Aaron Dignan (Spear's business partner in the Manhattan-based agency Undercurrent) who talked about people who were "born digital", first appearing in a series of presentations given by Josh Spear in 2007. First, at Google's Zeitgeist Europe Conference in May 2007. A different version of this presentation was delivered again in December 2007 at the United Kingdom at the Internet Advertising Bureau Engage 2007 Conference. A Digital Native research project is being run jointly by the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen
University of St. Gallen
The University of St. Gallen is a public research university located in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It is specialized in the fields of business administration, economics, law, and international affairs. The University of St. Gallen is also known as HSG, which is an abbreviation of its former German...
in Switzerland. A collaborative research project is being run by Hivos, Netherlands
Hivos
Hivos is a Dutch organization for development co-inspired by humanist values. Hivos provides financial and political support to over 800 partner organizations in over 30 countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Southeastern Europe...
and the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society. The Net Generation Encountering e-learning at university project funded by the UK research councils was completed in March 2010.
Gartner
Gartner
Gartner, Inc. is an information technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, United States. It was known as GartnerGroup until 2001....
presented on the term at their May, 2007 IT Expo (Emerging Trends) Symposium in Barcelona and, more recently, Gartner referenced Prensky's work, specifically the 18 areas of change comprising the Work Style of Digital Natives, in their "IT-Based Collaboration and Social Networks Accelerate R&D" research paper published on January 22, 2008.
Conflicts between generations
Due to the obvious divide set between digital natives and digital immigrants, sometimes both generations are forced to meet which commonly results in conflicting ideologies of digital technology. The everyday regime of worklife is becoming more technologically advanced with improved computers in offices, more complicated machinery in industry etc. With technology moving so fast it is hard for digital immigrants to keep up.This creates conflicts among older supervisors and managers with the increasingly younger workforce. Similarly, parents clash with their children at home over gaming, texting, YouTube, Facebook and other Internet technology issues. What many digital immigrants miss is that digital natives grew up with technology, and it is how they connect with their friends, perform research, and feel at home. Young people are not "addicts" or "bad" simply for using the tools of the world they grow up in. In their 2011 article, Dr. Ofer Zur and Azzia Zur discuss the issue of generation clashes at home, school and the workplace.
Education, as Marc Prensky
Marc Prensky
Marc Prensky is an American writer and speaker on learning and education. He is best known as the inventor and popularizer of the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" which he described in a 2001 article in ....
states, is the single largest problem facing the digital world as our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language. Immigrants suffer complications in teaching natives how to understand an environment which is "native" to them and foreign to Immigrants. Prensky's own preference to this problem is to invent computer games to teach digital natives the lessons they need to learn, no matter how serious. This ideology has already been introduced to a number of serious practicalities. For example, piloting an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the army consists of someone sitting in front of a computer screen issuing commands to the UAV via a hand-held controller which resembles (in detail) the model of controllers that are used to play games on an Xbox 360 game console.
(Jodie C Spreadbury, Army Recruiting and Training Division).
Discourse
Not everyone agrees with the language and underlying connotations of the digital native. It suggests a familiarity with technology that not all children and young adults who would be considered digital natives have, though some instead have an awkwardness with technology that not all digital immigrants have. This is depending on the location of the school and whether or not the students have access to these endless technologies. In its application, the concept of the digital native preferences those who grow up with technology as having a special status, ignoring the significant difference between familiarity and creative application. Like animals to their natural habitat, those who were raised in a digital world naturally develop a keen perception and understanding of their surroundings. Many children in this generation are empowered through technology because of this. Thus we should be able to use and teach using these technologies or examples of these technologies that the students have grown up with.The term digital immigrant overlooks the fact that many people born before the digital age were the inventors, designers, developers and first users of digital technology and in this sense could be regarded as the original 'natives'. To confuse the prolific (and arguably superficial) use of digital technology by current adolescents as deep knowledge and understanding is potentially misleading and unhelpful to the discourse. The term also discounts the broader and more holistic knowledge, experience and understandings that older generations may have about digital technologies and their potential place in society.
Crucially, there is debate over whether there is any adequate evidence for claims made about digital natives and their implications for education. , for example, critically review the research evidence and describe some accounts of digital natives having an academic form of a moral panic
Moral panic
A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order. According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics and credited creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of...
. Using such a terminology is rather a sign of unfamiliarity and exoticism in relation to digital culture. Of course, nobody is "born digital"; as with any cultural technology, such as reading and writing, it is matter of access to education and experience.
It considers that all youths are digital natives in the modern age. However, this is not the case. It is primarily based on cultural differences and not by age. According to Henry Jenkins (2007), "Part of the challenge of this research is to understand the dynamics of who exactly is, and who is not, a digital native, and what that means." There are underlying conflicts on the definition of the term "digital natives" and it is wrong to say that all modern age youths are placed in that particular category or that all older adults can be described as digital immigrants. Some adults are more tech savvy than a lot of children are depending on socio economic standings and other things.But as teachers we must include the world outside that the children are familiar with inside the classroom.
The formulation of digital native is also challenged by researchers looking at emerging technology landscapes. The current discourse concentrates largely on developed technology geographies and has a particular bias towards white, liberal, middle-class youth who have the privilege of access to technology. Nishant Shah (2009) says, "It is necessary to promote research that grasps that not all Digital Natives are equal. Each context will have certain norms by which digital nativity is understood and experienced. Dismantling the universal Digital Native and considering contextualised Digital Native identities might also help us move away from speaking of the Digital Native as a necessarily elite power-user of technology and understand the identity as a point of departure from earlier technology-mediated identities within those contexts." He also suggests that one way of understanding digital natives is to look at how they use digital technologies to engage with their immediate environments and initiate processes of social and personal change.
As we move into the second decade of the new millennium, others are calling into question Prensky’s Digital/Immigrant dichotomy on different grounds. recently conducted a literature review for the UK Higher Education Academy which found that there was no empirical evidence of a single new generation of young students. They argued that complex changes were taking place but there was no evidence of a generation gap. The nature of the metaphor itself is challenged, with White and Le Cornu (2011) drawing attention to the difficulties that a language-based analogy introduces, especially when then linked to age and place. They also highlight the rapid technological advances that have been made in the last ten years, most notably in the advent of social networking platforms. White and Le Cornu therefore propose an alternative metaphor of Visitors and Residents which they suggest more accurately represents the ways in which learners engage with technology in a social networking age.
Related articles
- Generation YGeneration YGeneration Y, also known as the Millennial Generation , Generation Next, Net Generation, or Echo Boomers, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere...
- Generation ZGeneration ZGeneration Z is a common name in the US and other Western nations for the group of people born from the early 1990s through to the present....
- Homo LudensHomo LudensHomo Ludens or "Man the Player" is a book written in 1938 by Dutch historian, cultural theorist and professor Johan Huizinga.It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society....
- Information societyInformation societyThe aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally through using IT in a creative and productive way. An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic,...
- Online identityOnline identityAn online identity, internet identity, or internet persona is a social identity that an Internet user establishes in online communities and websites...
External links
- The digital native wiki
- EDUCAUSE 2007 Podcast: Tomorrow's Students: Are We Ready for the New 21st-Century Learners?
- Commercial Media Viewing Habits: Digital Natives versus Digital Immigrants - Graduate Thesis Paper http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=bgsu1249505318
- Video experience on a 20 month-old baby who discovers a touchscreen
- Ongoing research project 'Digital Natives with a cause' being conducted by www.cis-india.org in India