Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives: Myth or Reality?

Introduction

Firstly recorded in the report of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) survey in 1995, (Servon, 2002), the term Digital Divide presents an interesting quandary of information and communication technologies (ICT) disparities among countries in the world, especially between developed and developing countries. Many reports even showed that access to ICT in these information “have” and “have-nots” countries was unequally even (Bridges.org, 2001; Fuchs & Horak, 2008; Norris, 2001 ; Van Dijk, 2009). Nonetheless, though inequities in access to ICT are most evident across countries, the same pattern is found within the countries themselves. In the U.S, for example, the gap in ICT access does exist between the low incomes and high income households, the unemployed and employed Americans and those living in central cities and rural areas (NTIA, 1995, as cited in Servon, 2002). In other words, it has been proved that there is an “information underclass” within population of a country (Wolff & MacKinnon, 2002, p. 1). Owing to this fact, Marc Prensky (2001a, 2001b), introduces additional notions in describing the gap, Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Based on these two concepts, I developed a poster for my final assignment. Thereby, to complement the poster, explanations cover both Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants and their multifaceted dimension will be briefly elaborated in following paragraphs.

Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives: Myth or Reality?

The terms digital immigrants, digital natives were firstly introduced by Marc Prensky through a series of articles in 2001. By using students and teachers relationship as illustration, this U.S technologist discusses on how the p...

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