Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

         Both Marc Prensky and Paul Kirschner have seemingly conflicting ideas on the idea of 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants'. To elaborate, a 'digital native', as Prensky states, is a person born with, and raised on, the new digital technology we have today. Whereas a 'digital immigrant' is a person who was born and raised without the technology, so likely someone of an older generation. The idea is that a digital native will always be more comfortable with digital media, while a 'digital immigrant will "always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past" (Prensky, 2). Overall, they both bring up good points about the adoption of digital technology and media today, with newer generations being exposed to it earlier and earlier. 

        Following the definition Prensky set, I would likely fall more into the category of 'digital native' rather than 'digital immigrant'. This is because I was born and raised during the large jump of technology in the world. In a short few spans of my young life, we went from projectors and white boards to smart boards. Emails and text became primary sources of communication, and very quickly we went from blackberries to smartphones. This was all in a very short period of my young life, so all in all, I would consider myself a digital native considering the fact that I was raised with this technology suddenly being commonplace. When I consider how it has affected my learning, I can see a few major points. For one, the most obvious point is this class. When I was a kid, online school was still in its early rudimentary days, and yet today there is little difference in the content being taught online vs in person. Even branching out past this point, we went from being taught via a whiteboard and markers to learning via a smartboard, where a complete webpage could be shown to the entire class easily. Along with the innovation, came struggles too, as smartphones became common, it became equally as common to be equally distracted. Along with this, we seemed to have abandoned some information retention due to the fact that we have phones in our pockets. Overall, technology has greatly helped me learn throughout the years, but that doesn't mean it's been without its downsides. 

        On the other side, Kirschner spoke about a lot of topics that were presented in the work of Prensky. The most prominent point raised is that being a 'digital native' does not mean you are 'digitally literate'. To put it simply, he is simply stating that just because you were raised with this technology, doesn't mean you necessarily know how to use it to its full extent. I think this can be seen in a myriad of different areas, some common ones are grammar and punctuation, setup of things like printers and copiers, and using certain programs like Microsoft Excel. These are all things that either a 'digital native' or a 'digital immigrant' can excel at given that they are able to read the starting guide, or manual. All of these are things that are easily not known by either generation, so I think Kirschner brings up a good point with that.

        All in all, looking at the two ideas presented by either Prensky or Kirschner, I do not think either is right or wrong. I think they both bring up good points, it is easier to become acclimated to something if you were born and raised on it. Whereas it will obviously be more difficult to adjust to something if you're experiencing it for the first time at 60. However, I've also met many people who are 'digital immigrants' who know more about the devices we use, then any 'digital native' likely does. So, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle, it is difficult to acclimate to newer technologies, but it is nowhere near impossible.