Digital natives v.s. Digital immigrants

1. What is "digital natives"?

According to Oxford online dictionaries, digital natives refer to people born or brought up during the age of digital technology and so familiar with computers and the Internet from an early age. Prensky (2001) stated that for digital natives, computer games, the Internet, cell phones, and instant messages are integrated parts in their lives. He also noted the following features:

• Used to received information really fast
• Like to parallel process and multi-task.
• Prefer graphics to text
• Prefer random access
• Prefer games to "serious" work 

2. Whats is "digital immigrants"?

Compared to digital natives, digital immigrants refer to people born or brought up before the widespread use of digital technology. They like to read information in hard copy form and read manual/instruction when acquiring new technology. Prensky (2001) indicated that digital immigrants still retain their strong accent, i.e., they just adopted to their digital environment rather than accustom themselves to the whole net world. They might, for instance, secretly print email and news to read, or bring people physically into office to see an interesting website. For digital immigrants, they have little appreciation for the new skills that digital natives acquired. They used to the learn those skills in a organized, step-by-step way, one thing at a time, individually, and above all, seriously. 

3. What are the difference?

The notable difference between digital natives and digital immigrants is the perception and way of receiving information. It's natural for the formers to receive information on the Internet and use hyperlink to communicate and share with their online friends via social media and social networking. The later seemed to use technology in their daily life but they are sometimes afraid of stepping out for learning a new technology stuff or skill. Take "social networking site" for example, digital natives might spent a lot of time on social networking sites, integrated their studies, entertainment, business, reading, and daily event for the whole day. However, the digital immigrants may/may not join a social networking service, or might be an passive users on any platform. All in all, the difference between both groups are not specifically well-defined, but their attitudes toward technology varies according to the acceptance into the digital world.

4. Is it possible that digital immigrants became digital natives?

According to the above mentioned, there's no specific boundary between digital natives and immigrants, but the biggest difference lies in the perception of technology. In what Prensky (2001a, 2001b) stated is how teacher need to speed up with the new generation and provided "random access" to improve their learning. However, VanSlyle (2003) disagreed what Prensky defined and proposed his counterargument on digital natives's information literacy, which is not so sufficient as we think. He eventually proposed a workable solution to which arises the "conception of of the cultural assimilation between the two group as a metal process of adaption rather than one-way street." In my opinion, though digital natives and immigrants are different groups, but it doest mean that they is no possibility to transfer from digital immigrants to digital natives. Once individuals become familiar with the way digital natives employ in their life, they are able to become digital natives. But the notion should be more awareness and understanding of cultural difference to the new generation and bridge the gap between them. 

ReferenceBennett, S., Maton, K., & Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British journal of educational technology,39(5), 775-786.
Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, M. (2009). H. sapiens digital: From digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. Journal of Online Education, 5(3), 1-9.
VanSlyke, T. (2003). Digital natives, digital immigrants: Some thoughts from the generation gap. The technology source, 7(3).

Week 5: Blog

Reflection

In this week, in the very beginning,  T. Patty made the clarification concerning the information and notice of the homework and gave us a clear direction of the assigned activities of this course. The assigned activities could be divided into three parts in terms of interactive problem-solving tasks, weekly journals and written work. Latter on, we continued the discussion of digital natives and digital immigrants. In addition, Patty gave us a kind reminder to the richness of communication media of the work. That is, we can complete our tasks in various forms such as text, graphics, and video, face-to-face interaction, or audio. At last, we stared the new topic of the week--blog, and tried to figure out what is a blog and what is a blog for. After the brief discussion, we also read a short story called "a story of 5 stages of a blogger" to end the discussion. 

After the clear slide, I realized all the activities that we need to do in class. But when I was observing in class it seemed that some classmates were still not into it, i.e., did not know how the class is organized. Maybe they required more time or guide to engage in class. As for task 2, I searched the terms "digital natives" and "digital immigrants" on google and found the first appearance of the two terms from Prensky (2001). Therefore, I read full paper and try to distinguish the difference. However, based on his description, it is obvious that the notable difference is on the perception of using technology. In my opinion, Prensky's idea is innovative but it's in totally correct in reality because there is a boundary between both group.

Week 4: Social Networking

Task 1: How to add Patty to your social networking group? [pdf file]

• Platform: Google+ 
• Step:
1. Apply one google account
• go to https://www.google.com.tw
2. Link your account to Google+ 
3. Set your personal information
4. Search your friends on Google+
• Search "Tonny Kuo" on Google+
5. Send request to Tonny Kuo
6. Tonny accept your request

Problem Identification

The interface language will present in Chinese if you sign up in Chinese/Taiwan area. If you would like to change the language into English version, please follow the direction.

1. Log in your Google account. Please check the URL to the direct page.
2. Key in your user name and password.
3. Choose the icon “Log In (登入)” to access your google service. If activated, you will be directed to the google home page. 
4. Click “Setting (設定)” lower right corner. Then, you will see a pop-up menus containing five choices. Please choose the first one, search settings (搜尋設定).
5. On the page of “search settings (搜尋設定)”, click “Languages (語言)” on the left site. Then, choose “English” to be the primary language, and then click “save (儲存)”Warming: Once you choose English, the current showing search results will presented in English, that is, you can ONLY search the information of English.
6. After directed to the Google homepage, choose the upper left “+ plus mark”. Then, you will be guide to activate google plus. 
7. You can import your friends’ emails or names to find them on Google plus.

Find people you know on Google+

1. Open Google+. Place your cursor in the top left corner for the Google+ main menu. Click  People.
2. Browse the suggestions and place your cursor over the Add button to add people to your circles (they won't know which circle you added them to).
3. To find additional people, click Find coworkers or Find classmates.

Setting your default language

1. Sign in to Google+ .
2. Click your full name or email address in the Google bar.
3. Click Account.
4. Click Language in the middle.
5. Choose languages in order of your viewing preference.

Find friends on google plus

1. Go to Gmail and then choose “Contacts”.

google contact

2. Click “NEW CONTACT”. Key in the name and email (Gmail required)of your friend.
3. Then, your friends’ profile will automatically present.

Add friend to contacts

4. Click the name of “Connected profile” so that you will be directed to his/her profile on google plus.
5. Click “add to circles” and choose one category.
6. Your friend then will receive the notification so that he/she can join you on google plus. 

send friend request