Week 8 Tasks

Digital Immigration - arguments on articles

My only main argument against the articles is the generalisation that seems to be occurring about this topic of digital immigration. Prensky's theory means there are only two main categories - digital natives and digital immigrants - which i feel is not being specific enough. All of the articles are basing their research just on these primary terms instead of thinking in a broader way of people that may fall just outside of these categories but still have similar characteristics.

Also i disagree with saying that people over a certain age are then categorised as digital immigrants as they are 'past it' and can't pick up the knowledge of a digital native just because of their age. The articles research into digital natives deal with people from a younger generation, but i would like to see data from older candidates that still have the same skills as younger digital natives.

I was interested in the articles that dealt with education and how new methods of teaching is being brought into the classroom like downloading lectures onto Ipods, etc. However, i have disagreements and concerns that our society are becoming too dependent on new technology and that maybe we are becoming lazy in this new generation of digital natives. We rely so heavily on technology to assist with lectures and seminars that we are forgetting the traditional forms of learning with a classroom of students all interacting with each other with pens and paper! I just hope this interest of adapting to the learning needs of digital natives doesn't dissolve all of the former traditional forms of teaching.