What's Wrong With Digital Nativity

Danah Boyd makes it clear that Presky's digital native/immigrant metaphor doesn't hold up to close examination. Her take is that though many youth are, in fact, knowledgable users of new technologies and social platforms, many are not. To continue in this vein, many native practitioners of a language are well-educated, well-read users of their mother tongue who have an explicit awareness of its mechanics and a passion for making the most of it, while there are many others who speak the same language that have only a superficial knowledge of how it works and they will never realize its fullest potential. (Not to mention all the in-betweens.)

After reading Boyd, I wouldn't feel comfortable with using the terms and ideas of this false dichotomy because they aren't accurate (for many more reasons than the one I mentioned) and they are incomplete. Academics and critiques have moved on from using these terms, but some journalists and school administrators still use them. The power of the metaphor is strong perhaps because the less metaphorical issue of immigrant vs. native is ever present and on everyone's mind. Speaking in this polarizing manner is also an uncomfortably convenient strategy of letting parents, teachers, and legislators (among others) off the hook, giving them license to think or say that youth will sort out their own digital literacy issues because it comes naturally to them.

And then of course, there is the problem of access and how it affects or is affected by the label of digital native. In Boyd's book, she quotes Henry Jenkins (seen here posing as the literal embodiment of a digital immigrant):

"Talk of digital natives may make it harder for us to pay attention to the digital divide in terms of who has access to different technical platforms and the participation gap in terms of who has access to certain skills and competencies or for that matter, certain cultural experiences and social identities. Talking about youth as digital natives implies that there is a world which these young people all share and a body of knowledge they have all mastered, rather than seeing the online world as unfamiliar and uncertain for all of us." (Boyd, 2014)

The digital divide rides the same rails as our nation's shameful economic divide. The underserved youth, who might only have full internet access at school or a public library, cannot be presumed to possess digital nativity, just as they cannot be presumed to have the means to go to college. The term digital native has been loaded down with untrue or exaggerated claims and connotations. Perhaps it's time we renounced its citizenship.

Am I A Digital Immigrant?

Why yes, I believe I am a digital immigrant. I was born a long time ago, before even our esteemed professor. I am an only child and spent tons of time alone (latchkey kid!) with the family tv where I learned more about my parents' and grand-parents' generation than my own by watching black and white (and very, very white) shows like I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, Dobie Gillis, to name a few. I have an iphone but I was very late in getting it and I'm pretty sure I could live without it most of the time. I like having access to information, however, but the most common way that I use my phone (not counting Red Sox recaps) is to use as a kind of meta-textual resource. For example, I was reading a book published and set in the early 70's yesterday and the author mentioned a particular brand of English car that I had never heard of, so I looked it up and it gave me a fuller picture of the story. I also get strange ideas about the etymology of English (or other) words while I'm reading. For example, I read something with the word "snake" and I suddenly needed to know why we use that word more than "serpent" (which is the word, or some variant, used in most Romance Languages.) 

So, I think I see the internet and the various devices we use to link into it as "extras." If they disappeared tomorrow, I would be fine. I would not feel like I was missing out on anything. Yes, some things would be less convenient. I'd have to locate and buy a paper map, I guess, and I'd have to make more solid plans about where and when I'm going to meet with somebody rather than texting "there in 10 mins", but my life would continue blissfully along. I don't think the same would be true for the digital natives. But since they are not likely to disappear, it is I who have to continue learning the language, until it gives me a headache, until I begin to dream in its idiom.

Pleased To Meet You, Hope You Guess My Name

You don't have to guess my name; I'll tell you. It is Brent Legault. I'm in the TESL program working on a degree and certification. This is my penultimate class. I live in Providence with my wife and this guy:

His name is Errol and he'll be two next month. He's not in daycare so he is what I do for most of the summer (my wife has a "real" job!)