11 months later

I first started writing this blog as a course requirement, eleven months ago. The course title was Technology and Language Teaching, an elective in the Applied Linguistics MA program at Georgia State University. The title of the blog, Musings of a Digital Immigrant was inspired precisely by a reference in our textbook. We owe the term digital immigrant to Marc Prensky –or so I believe. He defined such an individual by opposition to those whom he refers to as digital natives. Digital natives are members of a younger generation (30 or maybe younger) who grew up with digital technology. "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 are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants" [1]. According to Prensky, just like second language speakers, digital immigrants have an accent, which "can be seen in such things as turning to the Internet for information second rather than first, or in reading the manual for a program rather than assuming that the program itself will teach us to use it" [2]. I don't know if these behaviors are typical. I am more inclined to think that we, digital immigrants, cope with technology in different ways. Be that as it may, the idea that people of my generation and older operate with an accent in the digital world seems to me to be very eloquent. It reminds us, in passing, that having an accent is neither good nor bad, it just is. Personally, I think accents are fascinating, but that's a topic for another blog entry.


Reference
Prensky, M. (2001)"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1" On the Horizon Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001, pp.1-6 . Also available from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/
 

[1] Prensky (2001), pp. 1-2 
[2] Ibid., p. 2

Getting started

Starting a blog just proved a lot easier than I had expected. The really hard part -I'm afraid -begins at this point... maintaining it. Well, then, let's give this a try.

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Enough for today. Something will come to mind tomorrow.