Digital natives & digital immigrants

I only heard about the terms digital immigrants and digital natives while attending the PG Diploma in T&L(Module 3)…never heard it before, but after listening and reading about it, I guess it made a lot of sense…

Digital native means that a person is born when all the technologies are widely available and he/she is using these technologies extensively in the daily lives. Mostly those who are born in the 1980s are whom we considered as digital natives – these are the people who are used to playstation, video games, internet, mobile phones, computers and so on. Using technologies comes naturally to them. In other word, native = asal …for example, my two nephews are the digital natives in our family…

On the other hand, we also have the term digital immigrants. I consider myself as a digital immigrant….meaning all these technologies were not available when I was born, and as they are introduced, I began to learn how to utilize these technologies. It does not come naturally to me …and I am proud to say that we have another digital immigrant in the family ….my dad!

He just learn how to use the laptop – and to browse for stuffs in the internet since the beginning of this year.. but able to independently use the laptop on his own a few weeks ago. His is very much into scale-model (esp. war ships and speedboat) as a hobby….and most of the items that he wants are not available in Malaysia, and internet is such a wonderful thing ..he can browse for the various warships, planes and boats at his leisure ….and to think that when he was working in late 1990s and early 00s, he has a brand new computer that he never use! Me and my siblings are the ones who use the computer (in his office) at that time …as well as his colleagues!!! Now he is planning to get his own laptop …hooray for dad!!!!