Right from the start I found myself questioning Prensky’s idea of ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ perplexed by his somewhat outrageous statements suggesting age is the key determinant of a persons technological skill I was intrigued to see if any of my fellow colleagues had picked up on this barbaric idea.
While browsing through my colleague’s blogs I immediately found myself drawn in by Holly’s very creative and original title. Clearly a more confident blogger than myself I found Holly’s blog to be great source of inspiration when creating my WordPress page. Captivated by Holly’s fantastically visual blog I wanted to find out more.
I was happily surprised to see that Holly and I had both questioned the barbaric idea that age is a key determinant of a person’s technological skill. My comment on Holly’s blog came after immediately finding myself making a comparison to my blog. The most fundamental learning point I took away from Holly’s blog came from the developments I made when researching Beetham and Sharpe’s framework (2010). Firstly sourcing myself a definitive definition of the framework I soon found myself engrossed in a 2010 report by Futurelab, entitled; ‘Digital Literacy across the Curriculum’ (Hague and Payton, 2010) which suggests the assumption that all young people are digitally more adept than their predecessors couldn’t be further from the truth. While many young people are confident in using a wide range of technologies, often appearing to be able to learn and operate unfamiliar hardware or software very quickly, this is not the case for all young people, with many young people finding themselves affected by issues of class, race, gender and nationality. Furthering my point that the ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’ typology is far more adept at explaining the participation gap.
My comment on Richard’s blog was the pinnacle turning point in my research, the cherry on top of a Knickerbocker glory.
Although Richard was hastier in challenging the definitions made by Prensky he also agreed that age can’t be the sole component and that David White concept of digital ‘visitors’ and ‘residents’ is far more applicable in explaining the participation gap in this day and age. Fantastically illustrated by a YouTube video straight from White himself, I was able to learn more about his typology rather than from biased articles available on the Internet.
Taking all the information sourced myself and through reading and developing further my research from my colleagues blogs I believe even more so than before that I occupy the resident end of the continuum, reiterating Richards point that through being apart of the UOSM2008 module I now find myself belonging to an online community with a part of my persona remaining when I log off.
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Reference list
Hague, C. and Payton, S. (2010). Digital literacy across the curriculum. Available at: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/FUTL06/FUTL06.pdf. (Accessed: 17 April 2016).
harrietpigott1 