A person that I know who I would see as a threat to the notion of digital natives and digital immigrants is my old college media studies teacher. I couldnt really say how old he was exactly, but late 50's I would imagine. Although he was born before "the digital age", his level of digital and technological knowledge is so high, much higher than most people his age, and probably higher than people my age!
Being a media and film studies tutor for a-level students I guess its required that he has a certain degree of digital knowledge, but also having a teenage son my age, and a daughter who is two years older than me also plays a role in him being a threat. Raising children in a digital world and working with college students for many years of his life has obviously benifited him and educated him in technology and IT etc.
I remember him being the one tutor who relied on electical communication such as email to keep in contact with students, and he prefered to recieve an e-copy of all our assignments as well as a printed out version. He also was really up-to-date with other forms of technology such as mobile phones, and he had a contact number which he gave out to students in case they needed to contact him and didnt have access to email. He also has a facebook account, which isn't really expected of someone his age? To me, this makes him challenge Prenskys ideas, as he is older than a "digital native" should be, but really doesnt fall into the "digital immigrant" category at all.
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An excellent consideration of the issues. To have taken it 'into the stars', you might have brought in the other digital divides. Also, there's the issue of whether sociodeterminism is a good narrative when it comes to this guy?
ReplyDeleteAlways be trying to relate new information to the rest of the unit (as I think I've said before?).