When it comes to labeling our digital competence, White and Le Cornu (2011) propose an alternative to Prensky’s opposition between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants with their labels Visitor and Resident, which is more of a continuum, as opposed to Prensky’s dichotomy. Even after White and Le Cornu (2011) state that Prensky’s opposition has been criticized, Prensky (2012) insists that his his dichotomy as valuable for understanding education in the modern age.

I could not place myself in Prensky’s labels, as I was not born with a smartphone in my hand, but I got my first computer at a very young age and remember trying out pieces of code on my Commodore, (which was lacking a hard drive(!)). As I have grown up with the digital development, I may also have a deeper understanding of the functions of our digital tools, compared to the younger generation, that Prensky would label as Digital Natives, but that has mostly used digital tools with touchscreen, where everything just works as magic. Many teachers that I know have met students that show a surprising lack of skills when it comes to file management or search engine skills. Me being born in the 1970s (suddenly realizing this sounds ancient) would probably put me in the Digital Immigrant compartment, while my children, born in the 2000s would be Digital Natives. When it comes to digital competence, though, I would say that we possess different skills, but not that my children are any more competent in general. My husband (as ancient as myself) is certainly the most digitally competent in our family, as he has been creating hardware as well as software most of his life. I cannot see how Prensky’s definitions would suit us as individuals, and therefore I cannot agree with Prensky’s suggestions (2012) for using the definitions as a starting point for educational development.

In jiscnetskills (2014) we learn how David White further develops their ideas of Visitors and Residents as a continuum, and he also adds another layer of Personal or Institutional across that continuum, creating a vertical axis, that also forms a continuum. In this model it is more reasonable to place your digital competence or literacy in different places in the two continuums depending on the specific situation, underlining the different sets of competences.

As I reside online for a large part of my professional life, I would place myself more on the resident side of the continuum. Few things that I do are separated from digital tools. If I did not have my computer, I would not know what do work with, really, apart from perhaps some book reading. My personal life is easier to live without digital tools, but this does not make me feel like a visitor, as some social media as well as plenty of digital media is consumed in my personal life.

This situation, with me being in the digital world for a large part of my day, makes it difficult to separate my digital identity from my non-digital identity, regardless of it being personal or institutional. I do not see a need for it, nor do I have an urge to explore it. I just work and exist regardless of arena, and I have recently experienced how professional as well as private meetings have been online and in person in a mix, as we are starting physical meetings after the Covid isolation, and I cannot see how my identity differs in the different settings. I know that the connection with new students improve when I meet them in person, but that has nothing to do with a changed identity, but with non verbal communication being easier to read in a real life settings.

To sum this up, I agree with White and Le Cornu (2011) in their critique of Prensky’s dichotomy, and for me it is easier to use the model with the continuums. How these are to be used in an educational development aspect, is another story.

jiscnetskills (2014, March 10) Visitors and Residents [Video]. Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI

Prensky, M. (2012). From digital natives to digital wisdom hopeful essays for 21st century learning . Corwin.

White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i9.3171