Native Or Immigrant

Having read Marc Prensky's articles on 'Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants' I have been thinking a great deal about which I class myself as.

During the first ICT lecture of the course, it was suggested that if born after 1985, you are a digital native. I was born in 1987 and am not completely sure if I consider myself a 'native'. This is due to the fact that I can clearly remember a computer not entering our house until I was in my teens, and that was even with some reluctance from Mum, who (of course being a digital immigrant) viewed it as a waste of money. Dad maintained that it was useful for him for work, and even for us for homework.
Prior to this computer entering our home, the only technology in our house was a television and a VCR and I remember distinctly being annoyed with my parents as a teenager as I was the 'one one' at school not to have sky television!

Today, I don't think I am very confident with ICT at all. I struggle with carrying out tasks on the computer and over the summer got increasingly annoyed with the university, as all enrollment and correspondence happened online. I felt like I had no concrete information by not having it on paper in my hand (this is too my problem when we are told that 'it will be on blackboard' as a struggle to work off the computer). I also write my assignments first by hand, print them to read them and edit, correcting the piece on the computer with my printed, written all over, copy at my side. Although, I am not so bad that I need to print out emails to read them.

Having said that, I have a facebook page, I have a myspace page, I have a last.fm page and do use the computer on a daily basis to use the internet (keep in touch with friends, celebrity gossip and such!), so perhaps I am not as bad as I think.
I also think that my laptop is slowly dying, but after having it for 3 years it'll be hard to part with it! (perhaps this is also part of my problem- refusing to move on to new and better things! Give me an old VHS over a DVD anyday!)

I think something that does need to be considered when thinking about Prensky's articles is the background that children come from. Perhaps school is the only place that they truly come in touch with ICT (I know that for me, that was generally the case), therefore it is important that help is on hand for those that struggle to work the ICT, and also that they do have the opportunity to use ICT in schools.

Having carried out the 5 serial days in my placement school, it seems that they are very much up to date with ICT and it is incorporated strongly into as many aspects of the curriculum as is possible. All classrooms have IWBs and the ICT suite is timetabled so that each class have a day of the week in which they can carry out an ICT lesson. Luckily, all of which I was able to understand.

I do view myself as a digital immigrant in terms of the points established by Prensky (in that I write my assignments first, edit them printed off and am not too confident with dealing with computer based tasks), however, I do perhaps step slightly over into the area of digital native, as compared to some (i.e. my mother!) I do have a greater understanding of how ICT works and the benefits of ICT. I have also seen the benefits of using computer games to inhance learning, in particular using the BBC schools website I highlighted in my last blog to aid typing ability, first hand and can therefore understand why Prensky highlights computer games can help digital natives to learn. This however, is only since the serial days, previously I was not so convinced by this point raised by Prensky. Seeing these ideas in practice has helped my understanding of how digital natives learn.