Native, Immigrant, or Practitioner?
Marc Prensky coined the term digital native to refer to persons who have grown up with digital technology including computers, Internet sites, and applications. In particular, Marc said that today's "students are no longer little versions of us, as they may have been in the past. In fact, they are so different from us that we can no longer use either our 20th century knowledge or our training as a guide to what is best for them educationally."
Admittedly, terms digital natives and digital immigrants shocked me when I first heard of them.Last night I caught my son (11) in his room doing "some urgent work" and precisely:
And my 11-years old son just self-installed Windows 7 and is actively using it and learning most of available configuration aspects. Which is definitely a good statement about Windows 7. The end of Windows hell? In some way, I glimpse similarities between Windows 7 and the first OS I really enjoyed so many years ago--the mythical Windows 95.
When I mentioned all of this with my wife, she said "How do you call yourself? Are you a native too or are you an immigrant?" Well, I believe that, all in all, I'm just a practitioner :-)