With Prensky (2001) definition, I have often felt like a digital immigrant and I have often regarded the students as natives to the digital world. In most apps and digital devices I am a late adapter and I recognize that when I become a frequent user of a social media, there are many new ones out there and it seems like the young ones have left the social media I use. Today, I still love using Facebook. It is the mix of using both text and pictures I love. For instance, I have tried Instagram and despite I love photos and regard me as a quite good amateur photographer I miss the writing part in Instagram. Of course, I know it is possible to write in Instagram but I do not like when the text “disappear”. Today, I actually have two Facebook*s (FB) account. One for me and one for my beloved Cavalier King Charles spaniel (dog) Lukas. My personal account is approximately 10 years old and I am reasonable active and have about 200 FB friends. However, Lukas have become a star in the Swedish Cavalier community. I (Lukas) is a member in many Swedish Cavalier FB groups and he is with no doubt the most popular Cavalier in Sweden’s biggest Cavalier FB group “Våra underbara Cavalierer” (more than 4000 members). So six months ago Lukas got his own FB account and he has already over 500 followers. I think his (our) success come from a) he is very beautiful (he has won dog shows), b) my nice and creative photos, c) I am not that bad writer, especially when I write about beloved things. So thinking about this, maybe I am not native in the digital world but I can master it if I really want. This suit better with White’s (2020) idea that it is the motivation to engage that explain your digital success not your age.
However, I still think that the young ones that are born during the social media era have an advantage to us older in the digital world. For them the usage of digital apps come more natural and they also learn each other. But as White (2014) mention digital literacy is much more than be able to use the newest digital apps. However, the young students still need to learn many things that they are not born with. First of all, they need to learn the concepts, theories and models in their academic discipline. For instance, the ability to understand opportunity cost will not be higher for a first year economics student today even if he/she master TikTok and could use Google for searching. Second, even if the young ones today probably are much better to us search engines than my generation was when we arrived to university. They still need to learn to critical evaluate and use the information. Third, for writing academic texts, it is not enough to practices tweeting. So – in Prensky definition – I believe that we “immigrants” have an important role in learn the “natives” to master digital literacy. We also saw during the spring 2020, that we “immigrants” were able to adapt digital solutions very fast when Covid motivated us, maybe more about that in further blogs…..
White, D. (2014). “Visitors and Residents” ”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&feature=youtu.be.
White, D. (2020). Visitors & Residents – teaching during Coronavirus. http://daveowhite.com/category/visitors-and-residents/
Prensky, Marc (2001). ”Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. On the Horizon, MCB University Press, Vol 9, No 5.
