Digital natives and immigrants - lost in translation (part 1)

The starting point for many discussions around learning in the digital age begins with the question: Are you a digital native or a digital immigrant? But, be warned, your response can then determine the direction of your conversation, with the inquirer making a host of assumptions about who you are, what you know and what you think. Whilst some question the determinist view of this form of classification, it can be useful in framing how to consider the development of learning technologies and student engagement with these. So let’s start with the question, explore what this means and then consider so alternative perspectives:
Are you a digital native or a digital immigrant?
The question should be easy to answer – if you were born after 1980 (in the US) or 1984 (in Europe) you are a digital native – everybody else is an immigrant. Digital natives are considered to have been born into a digital world and they have no knowledge of a world without technology.
Prensky terms from his 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants has become a useful nomclamenture to quickly articulate the points made. However a number of writers have challenge the simple dichotomy that his classification suggests, whether it is backed up with evidence of greater usage of technology and importantly for us, whether it really changes the way people learn.

It is definitely helpful to review the primary source paper, and it is clear from the paper that there is more in the sub-text about generational divide and willingness to change, than specifics of “number of hours using technology”. It provides a different perspective on “the trouble with the kids today, with their hair and their clothes”. In particular the points he, as a digital immigrant, makes about the thickness of accents:
“There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email (or having you secretary print it out for you – an even “thicker” accent); needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL)…..My own favourite is the “Did you get my email?” phone call.”

The paper explores the impact of this action on the generational divide and goes on to outline how education might be different but there is more to the immigration analogy than simply the accent. It speaks more to the immigrants place in the world and ways of thinking.
He suggests that the immigrant community, by their nature, are deemed to declare: “I am not comfortable in this place”. Let’s consider the immigration analogy a little further, by exploring some themes around English ex-pat community in Spain (and other Mediterranean countries) as a parallel “immigration”. There is no single immigrant community or attitudinal set, but rather sub-sets, let's explore these and their learning technology equivalents:

Spain: “I like the climate, but I want to live in a mini-England with sun”
Learning Technology: “I like the convenience of technology for booking holidays, banking, news etc but I want to teach they way I always have”

Spain: “I love living in Spain, but I haven’t bothered to learn the language, I get my son/daughter to deal with all the Spanish things”
Learning Technology: “I like being associated with a technology-rich course, but I rely on younger members of the teaching team to do it.”

Spain: “I can’t really speak the language, but I have a few stock phrases I can use to get by in shops”
Learning Technology: “I don’t understand it, but I have my list of eight steps to upload my teaching material and I can email if I need to”

Spain: “I speak great Spanish! And the locals are so grateful when I try” (think policeman in ‘Allo ‘Allo)
Learning Technology: “I use as much technology as I can, and the students are so grateful I ‘deliver’ in this way”

Spain: “I like Spain, I like everything about it, I have to learn the language to really live here, to get the most out of it”
Learning Technology: “Don’t give me this digital immigrant nonsense, I live in the digital age too, if I want to use technology and it makes learning better – I will!”

OK, so that is the “foreign land” perspective and whilst many will continue to assert that learning is learning and will never change, and that “all this is fine, but not in my subject”, many digital natives leave the higher education classroom with a mashed-up, mp3 speed-enhanced, flickr-blog impression that the first line of L.P. Hartley’s (1953) novel The Go-between is speaking directly to them - the past really is a foreign country, and they really do do things differently there...