Digital natives
Digital Natives
Digital Natives refers to those who grew up with modern technology and have spent their entire lives surrounded by new technologies such as: computers, mobiles, e-mail and the internet and theses form an integral part of their lives. Most digital natives are self taught and are generally under the age of 25.
Digital Natives do exist as children from as young as two have grown up playing, exploring and experimenting with new technology until it achieves what they want it to achieve. They are not afraid of ‘playing’ with the technology and learn processes by doing.
Digital natives generally have a little knowledge in lots of different areas. Often this is only surface learning and they rely on instant access and speed. They have confidence in using most devises.
Whilst they are confident in their native digital language of Microsoft, often when faced with new languages such as ‘Macs’ and ‘ipads’, they struggle to understand the new language and quickly switch off. This then can turn a digital native into a digital immigrant and when it comes to computers, most seem less keen to learn a whole new ‘digital language’. Another concern with digital natives is that they heavily rely on gaining their knowledge from the Internet and often this resource is not always reliable. Digital natives don’t always have the understanding on how to use the Internet effectively.
Lastly, Prensky comments that in order for digital natives to learn, they need computer games even for the most serious content and this belief, in our opinion, is flawed.