Casey+Sneider

Question #1: Will there always be “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants?”

In today’s society, people are separated into two types of groups, “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants.” Digital Natives consists of the young people in grades K through college who have grown up with all this new technology, such as computers, the internet, cell phones, and video games. Digital Immigrants consists of the older generations who were not born into the digital world, and had to adapt to and learn how to use these new technologies. I feel that these two groups of people will always exist, however, I believe that my generation, who are currently the Digital Natives, will one day become the Digital Immigrants as new computers, iPads, iPods, and cellphones are created. In the future, new ways of transportation, talking to friends and family, and sharing information with one another may come about and my generation will have to learn about these new technologies and adjust to them. Cars, trains, and planes may become obsolete or cell phones may no longer exist, and we will be the Digital Immigrants studying how to use and operate the newest tools. However, we will be accepting of these new technologies because we love when the newest gadget is available to us, quickly replacing the iPhone 4 with the iPhone 4S. We will forever be a generation of innovation.

I think it's interesting how you bring up very prominent items today perhaps becoming absolete in the future. My favorite example - cell phones. The technology of cell phones are changing and improving rapidly, but they may be a thing of the past when we are our parents' age. Remember beepers or pagers? There's no way to avoid becoming a Digital Immigrant, as long as new technologies are being made. - Meredith Wiese

I appreciate that you acknowledge our ability to be innovative in the education field, and that we will always try our best to adapt to the technological advances as we grow older. We will never be completely "up do date" with technology, but I do agree with you that we will try our best to implement these advances into the classroom. This may be the only way to communicate with our students. Who knows what the future will bring. Hopefully we can avoid teaching how we were taught, because if that is so, then I would never use technology in my classroom. We must attempt to break the trend of Digital Immigrants.
 * Response to DIscussion Question #1:**

- Brianna Guidos