Digital natives in society

This is the first of two articles, where I will write about ICT in society and work life. The articles are part of a course in ICT and learning, and they will both adress the term digital natives. The first article will focus on the term digital natives in society and the second will be about digital natives, learning and education. I have written most of the articles in Google documents, and short summaries with a video in the blog posts. I also refer to the thinking map I made in Bubbl when working with the two articles. By following this link, you may get to the first article in Google documents.

The first article is about digital natives in society. Here is a short summary of the article:

• Digital natives is a term and theory by Marc Prensky. Similar terms could be digital children, neo-millenials or 21st century learners. These theories try to explain how the 21st century is changing the way humans think, act and learn.
• When we talk about digital natives it is common to compare them to digital immigrants. Digital immigrants are people born before 1982, and were raised in a world where TV, radio and computers with worse graphics than today’s mobile phones.
• Digital natives are used to and surrounded by different kinds of media and communication tools. Compared to digital immigrants they live in a high-tech world with different media opportunities like Internet and high-tech games.
• Digital natives speak the “language” of the 21st century. They are natives in the digital world, and can cope with many of the new challenges. A digital immigrant may adjust to being a native, but most immigrants will always have an “accent”, which may result to problems adjusting to the new life, and in understanding the digital natives.
• There are some problems with the theory of the digital natives, and I have named a few of them in the article. Even if there are some problems in the theory of the digital natives, I think the theory is easy to grasp and tells me more about today’s children and how they think, act and learn.

You may read the whole article here: Digital natives in society

Finally, a short video on digital natives: