Digital Natives: 10 Years Later

Embryo holding phone in womb
Now these are the kinds of reads that I most enjoy for weekend reflection. Besides already agreeing with the premise that there is no such thing as a digital native/immigrant except in a very specifically defined social and economic class, there’s just the beauty of constantly having this discussion continue as we figure out what digital means whether we are in digital-accessory communities or digital-transformative ones.

Here is the introduction summary from a journal looking at this idea of being digital native or a digital immigrant, and what is right and wrong about such terms and resulting approaches:

A lot has been written about the digital native since the coining of the term about ten years ago. A lot of what has been originally written by the digital native has been taken as common sense and has been repeated many times in many educational contexts, but until recently the true nature of the digital native has not been explored. Because the myth of the digital native is still alive and well, this article aims to examine the findings that have come out of recent research with regard to digital natives and their true nature, as well as turn a critical gaze onto the assumptions, taken as common sense knowledge, of what the characteristics of digital natives are.

Read the rest of Digital Natives: Ten Years Later by Apostolos Koutropoulos and the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (PDF).