rookieteacher - Digital-Immigrant, Native, and Inbetween [Jan. 13th, 2007|11:13 pm]

At my school, we are part of a grant that provides laptops. Talk about being immersed in technology. After 4 months of this, I have become very thoughtful on how much technology has changed in my lifetime. But first, some vocabulary.

Digital Immigrant: Most people 30 & above. Imigrants weren't born into a world of technology and computers. Like the names suggests, Immigrants are trying to adapt to a foreign culture.

Digital Natives: These kids have been inundated with technology their whole lives, and using it as natural as breathing. To Natives, email is for old people, they text and chat.

Native 1.0: Not an official term, but I am using it to describe those of us who were born near or just after computers first became useful to the common man. N 1.0's demonstrate most attributes of Natives, but will have some attributes of Immigrants as well. I place myself in this category

After quizing my parents, I learned that our first computer was an Atari 400, purchased in 1981. I was 2.
Memory ranging from 8-to a whopping 48K, this bad boy came with one cartridge slot, and two internal expansion slot. All for a measly 600 dollars.

I laugh looking back. How could we have ever used such a dinky machine? But at the time, computers in the home were pretty rare. The year I was born(1979), personal computers in homes reached a whopping half a million. By 2002, over 1 billion PC's had been shipped nationwide (Computer Hope).
I guess you could say, my parents were some of the original PC immigrants. I've spent 27 years watching computers rapidly change, when I was younger mostly from watching my dad.

Still, it is amazing to me to look at todays kids. They can't imagine a time without technology, whereas I can remember a time when technology was rare. My parents remember punch cards, I remember cartridges. What will 12 year olds today recall? The outdated PS2? When IPods were first introduced? Perhaps when the purchased/were given their first 1 Gb thumdrive.