Personal+Perspective

=Personal Perspective=

While I agree that children born today are surrounded by the most technological society mankind has ever created, I do not fully support the idea that children (Digital Natives) are beyond the means of our current education system. While there are some students that are technologically adept, the vast majority are not. Some may be skilled at a particular medium (cell phone or ipod), but are far from masters of all of them. Additionally there are students I've witnessed first hand who, despite being "Digital Natives" have no idea about technology, they think powerpoints are awesome, and that my flip phone is "cool". Overall I believe that at the current time our educational system does not a drastic overhaul and can survive quite well by using traditional teaching methods, interspliced with the odd technological innovation. Secondly I do not believe the criteria for a Digital Native is specific enough. I have met a vast number of children who were born post 1995 that do not understand the worlds current technology. While being born in todays world definitely gives children a good foundation to learn (as they are emmersed in the technological world), without constant access to these technologies they will be no more skilled than anyone else. So to be a Digital Native not only must you grow up with 21st century technology, but you must have the means (money) to afford the technology.

Furthermore the claim that Digital Natives can learn technology faster than others is simply an ability of children (which has been witnessed throughout time). It is well known that it is easier to learn a language as a child than as an adult, is this because they are Language Natives? No! It's because they are fully immersed in the language and are developing (identically to Digital Natives and technology).

To be digitally able has nothing to do with age, what matters is the accessibility of the technology. I find it extremely ignorant to call the generation that invented the Digital Natives technology as immigrants. Who taught the Digital Natives? Peers? Possibly. But there is no doubt that a majority of users today learned how to operate their digital devices by reading the operating manual (written by a so-called "immigrant").

There are people of all ages who have no idea how to utilize the technology available to them (or that it even exists), yet we can recognize that the opposite also holds true. The key to being truly digitally native is not to be born recently, it is to be immersed in a technological world, and older people with access to these technologies are far more likely to be experts than "Digital Natives" that cannot afford, and who are not immersed, in the technology.

Now head on over here, to go directly to my sources.