The Digital Native & The Digital Immigrant... Which One Are You?

     In this day and age, it feels like everyone has a smartphone, including my 57-year-old father. I always like to joke that his favorite hobby is cursing Steve Jobs for creating the iPhone, which inevitably forced him to abandon his long and loving relationship with Blackberry. He is, now, incredibly knowledgable when it comes to technology, but would kill to have his old phone back. Born in the 60s, my wonderful dad had the task of learning a brand new way to connect with others on an entirely new platform. He frequently calls my siblings and me with questions about his new iPhone, which he swears he only has to FaceTime us kiddos. You see, I had the luxury of growing up with technology, and he didn't. If researcher Marc Prensky were to classify my father into a category that best describes him, he would be a "digital immigrant." In Prensky's study of digital consumers' relationships with technology and the world wide web he coined the terms "digital immigrant" and "digital native." A digital immigrant is, like my pops, those who were not born into the digital world but have adopted the technology that was born in the process. 

    On the opposite side of Prensky's research is the "digital native," or those who were born in the digital era and are native speakers of the digital language. Born in the late nineties, I have grown up with technology. To me, this is pretty normal-seeming as most of my peers and relatives are digital natives as well. Being a digital native is, honestly, pretty great in my eyes. I am able to easily adapt to new advancements in technology, and it's made learning from home a bit easier. To put it simply, being a digital native has improved my quality of life, especially when it comes to learning. I can fondly recall the time when my cursive writing class in elementary school was quickly omitted to create time to hone my QWERTY keyboard craft. I look back on those classes with love, especially when I watch my parents struggle to type out an email in under five minutes. All jokes aside, I have found being a digital native to be the most helpful as I continue my education online. My digital fluency has provided me an upper hand during good 'ol Zoom University, enabling me to attend class from a safe area while never feeling like I don't have the adequate resources to succeed in my classes. But with this comes a double-edged sword. I have found that many of my professors are digital immigrants who are still working to grasp the technology that comes so easily to me. This can cause issues when learning, especially when a teacher doesn't feel comfortable utilizing the online resources that make classes easier to digest. 

With regards to my digital nativism and my current course load, I feel like there are a lot of various new digital native methodologies that could be implemented. The one that sticks out in my head the most is that of allowing students to create their own online assignments based on a course's curriculum. In an age where we have so many different ways to learn and present what we have learned, students should be given the freedom to display their knowledge in whichever way they see fit. I believe that this would also be of great benefit to "digital immigrants" because they could then opt out of any technology that they don't have a strong grasp on and process course content in a way that they best see fit.