The youngest digital immigrant you know.
The youngest digital immigrant I know is probably a 9 year old who I babysit. She has older parents and therefore her household is fairly limited in terms of technology. A television is probably the most technology available to her and before school she never had access to a games console, a computer, the internet or a mobile phone. Since starting school, she has begun to use computers as part of her education but was describing to me that everyone else is better than she is at the tasks they perform on a computer. This suggests that missing out on early use of a computer means that she failed to learn to use this technology as her friends did before school and that she isn’t equipped to learn as fast as they are.
However, according to Prensky’s ideas, as she is so young and with his thoughts on neuroplasticity she is likely to pick up the new technologies very quickly now that she has begun to use them and will probably become a native fairly soon. After all, I class myself as a native (when it comes to computers) and wasn’t using them at this age; more evidence that the idea of DN/DIs is less rigid than initially suggested.
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Do you think that because this nine year old is a digital immigrant, she will look at computers differently to the digital natives in her class? Do you think that she might be able to adjust to new and different technology easier than those that have grown up with computers?
ReplyDeleteShe definitely seems to from what she's told me...although few of them had used the comp programmes before school she had more trouble picking them up, so i'd guess her brain hasn't learnt how to process the digital information.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, i think as she's so young and because of the brains neuroplasicity she'll probably be like all her classmates within the next few years.