User:CarlSHess/sandbox

Discourse
Not everyone agrees with the language and underlying connotations of the digital native. The term suggests an entire generation with a familiarity with technology that not all children and young adults who would be considered digital natives have and that not all adults outside the identified generation lack. In a survey of British people of multiple generations, Helsper and Eynon identified that, in addition to age, gender and education had a strong influence on how people used and felt comfortable with information technology. Additionally, not all young people were equally adept with these technologies, and how different generations used technology had many similarities, rather showing a clear digital native/digital immigrant divide. While studying first-year students at the University of Melbourne, Kennedy et al. discovered that there were a few core technologies and tools that almost all students were comfortable using, such as laptops, mobile phones, and email, there was considerable variance in the use of other digital technologies. Ability to use the core technologies did not necessarily translate into the ability to use all digital technologies. There have been numerous studies that indicate that not all members of the generations termed "digital natives" have similar levels of technological understanding. These students are what Bennet described as “digital natives or the net generation, these young people are said to have been immersed in technology all their lives, imbuing them with sophisticated technical skills.” (Bennet, et, p. 775). Future teachers will come to the table of education with much more experience with the use of social media than their predecessors. Their use of social media has the opportunity to influence the way that social media is and can be utilized as a tool for collaboration.

The term digital immigrant overlooks the fact that many people born before the digital age were the inventors, designers, developers and first users of digital technology and in this sense could be regarded as the original 'natives'. To confuse the prolific (and arguably superficial) use of digital technology by current adolescents as deep knowledge and understanding is potentially misleading and unhelpful to the discourse. The term also discounts the broader and more holistic knowledge, experience and understandings that older generations may have about digital technologies and their potential place in society.

Digital Natives term is synonymous with the term Digital Inclusion. Being digitally included means that you are innately able in using a smartphone or computer tablets. Crucially, there is debate over whether there is any adequate evidence for claims made about digital natives and their implications for education. , for example, critically review the research evidence and describe some accounts of digital natives as having an academic form of a moral panic. Using such a terminology is rather a sign of unfamiliarity and exoticism in relation to digital culture. Of course, nobody is "born digital"; as with any cultural technology, such as reading and writing, it is matter of access to education and experience.

It considers that all youths are digital natives in the modern age. However, this is not the case. It is primarily based on cultural differences and not by age. According to Henry Jenkins (2007), "Part of the challenge of this research is to understand the dynamics of who exactly is, and who is not, a digital native and what that means." There are underlying conflicts on the definition of the term "digital natives" and it is wrong to say that all modern age youths are placed in that particular category or that all older adults can be described as digital immigrants. Some adults are more tech savvy than a lot of children, depending on socio-economic standings, personal interests, etc., but as teachers we must include the world outside with which the children are familiar and use it inside the classroom.

The formulation of digital native is also challenged by researchers looking at emerging technology landscapes. The current discourse concentrates largely on developed technology and has a particular bias towards white, middle-class youth who have the privilege of access to technology. Nishant Shah (2009) says, "It is necessary to promote research that grasps that not all Digital Natives are equal. Each context will have certain norms by which digital nativity is understood and experienced. Dismantling the universal Digital Native and considering contextualised Digital Native identities might also help us move away from speaking of the Digital Native as a necessarily elite power-user of technology and understand the identity as a point of departure from earlier technology-mediated identities within those contexts." He also suggests that one way of understanding digital natives is to look at how they use digital technologies to engage with their immediate environments and initiate processes of social and personal change.

It is possible to argue that digitality is not a birth-right but instead a product of cultural capital. According to its originator, Pierre Bordieu, cultural capital is defined as “the possession of certain cultural competencies, bodies of cultural knowledge, that provide for distinguished modes of cultural consumption”. Familiarity with technology and ease of use is a form of social capital that allows those who possess it to advance in society.In fact, scholars have commented on the variability of technological literacy in different social groups. In “Communities, Cultural Capital and the Digital Divide,” Viviana Rojas calls this phenomenon a person's "techno-disposition." This familiarity with technology is one of many privileges granted by cultural capital. She defines techno-disposition more explicitly as " practices, perceptions and attitudes, technical education, awareness of technology, desires for information, job requirements, social relations with community members and community organizations, and geographical location." One's techno-disposition, not simply one's access to technology, she argues, is at the root of any digital divide.

As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, others are calling into question Prensky’s Digital/Immigrant dichotomy on different grounds. recently conducted a literature review for the UK Higher Education Academy which found that there was no empirical evidence of a single new generation of young students. They argued that complex changes were taking place but there was no evidence of a generation gap. The nature of the metaphor itself is challenged, with White and Le Cornu (2011) drawing attention to the difficulties that a language-based analogy introduces, especially when then linked to age and place. They also highlight the rapid technological advances that have been made in the last ten years, most notably in the advent of social networking platforms. White and Le Cornu therefore propose an alternative metaphor of Visitors and Residents which they suggest more accurately represents the ways in which learners engage with technology in a social networking age.