Populating two worlds: Digital Immigrants

September 8, 1:46 PMSF Boomers ExaminerSuzanna Stinnett

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the SF Boomers Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

This post is part of the Glossary Series, a 100-day conversation designed to develop and clarify the language we use to describe online communication. As Year 2008 comes to a close, the emerging Glossary of Online Communication will be published along with a selection of the comments from my readership. I hope to see your comments among them.

Day 4: Digital Immigrant

Digital immigrant: n. Those of us who were not born into the digital world, but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology. Digital immigrants (like all immigrants) retain, to some degree, their “accent,” that is, their foot in the past. Examples of the accent can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first. A digital native would call a digital camera “my new camera,” while a digital immigrant would refer to it as “my new digital camera.”

For those who find this intriguing (or confusing), I highly recommend Marc Prensky's article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants."

Suzanna

See Day 1: Online Communication

See Day 2: Onground

See Day 3: Global brain