There is no speaker native to the virtual world, and the concept of digital native (Prensky, 2001), which assigns innate expertise by birthright, is both dated and ageist. Digital competencies are socially learned, not innately developed (p. 21, Lotherington & Ronda, 2014).We've discussed the terms digital native and digital immigrant as a class, and generally agreed the terms are offensive for a number of reasons. First, as L&R point out, they are dated and ageist terms. Secondly, especially today, the word immigrant has such negative and racist connotations, it doesn't adequately convey the attributes of someone who is learning a new skill set: naïveté and continuous improvement. Third, the choice of labeling individuals as one of two end members is a narrow-minded generalization. Digital competency is a spectrum of digital familiarity, confidence, exposure, and practice, all of which increase over time or with continuous dedication. Sure, kids who grow up playing with an iPhone are going to take to similar technologies because it became second nature to them over time, and with lots of practice (screen hours). But I agree with L&R, that children these days do not have an "innate expertise by birthright". I feel lucky to have a bit of a head start on learning to type at a young age and having a shared computer in my house at about 5th grade. But I know I know more about computers and technology than "kids these days".
I'm reminded of a TED talk I saw about Sugata Mutra, an educational researcher who installed a computer in a hole in the side of a wall on the edge of a slum outside New Delhi, India where children grow up without access to technology. He filmed their curiosity and progress of learning and teaching each other to use the computer. There are a couple different videos about his "School in the Cloud" idea, but here's one. I found it quite interesting that no matter the language, the children could learn to use the computer. Mutra's Hole in the Wall studies remind us that children are fearless and naturally curious, something Neil deGrass Tyson has talked about in terms of science and technology.
I'm very curious how the dramatic increase in screen time most kids are getting these days might set them apart from previous generations. True, we can't really call them "digital natives" based solely on their age, but there's no denying that a good portion of the U.S. population under 18 is more digitally literate than most of us were at their age. This doesn't mean they possess digital wisdom (as Benini and Murray, 2014, called it), but they're growing up in an age where having digital wisdom is becoming more and more important.
ReplyDeleteCool story about Sugata Mutra and his computer in the hole in the wall! (I loved the story about how people's pronunciation was improved by a speech-to-text engine.) And Kayla, I couldn't agree more about digital *wisdom.*
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