Week 8- Website 1+ 2

Website 2- This article reinforces the ideas that the previous website article presented, especially highlighting the cultural divide between Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives. However, the author predominantly disagrees with many of the conclusions reached in the previous article. The author is writing this from his own experiences of this divide. The article draws upon the question of whether all students fit the term Digital Native, and the author disagrees with the author of article 1's idea that learning must be adapted into virtual games etc arguing that "While it appears that the digital natives, on average, grew up reading less and engaging with digital media more, this does not mean that they are illiterate or unresponsive to traditional forms of teaching and learning". Here the author recognises the different abilities of people learning, and believes that a computer program cannot produce the same level of teaching as a human teacher. The author highlights that there is an overemphasise on the differences between a digital immigrant and digital native but what of the similarities? The author states that we can learn from looking at digital immigrants and natives but we should not take this analogy too far. This article was written in 2003 and overall I think its usability is great it takes the previous articles argument and presents its own counter argument, considering parts of the argument but also revealing reasons why this does not work. However once again this is over 6 years ago, and the impact of the Internet on students has become even greater during this time. Does this mean that the differences between digital natives and digital immigrants are pushed to even greater lengths today?

Website 1- This article acknowledges the established terms Digital Native and Digital Immigrant, the author explores the fundamental differences between the two terms, and how a generation that has grown up with new technology(digital world) differs to those who have grown up in an analogue world. This article was published online in 2001, and though this is over 8 years ago it is still relevant, the article can be found on the authors website with a link to it, and I would say the article usability is straightforward and easy to access. I think the authors ideas of teaching becoming a virtual game for students to learn off still is a revolutionary idea and even in 2009 I do not think this could happen, but who can predict what effect the Internet may have in years to come? The article raises issues about the teaching and learning of this digital generation, asking whether or not they need to be taught about technology, because their way of learning differs to that of other generations. "It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today's students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors". The article asks what about those who are not part of this generation, the digital immigrants so to speak and about their "accent"an example of this is printing out an email, printing out a word document to edit, referring to the Internet after other methods of finding something else. This article highlights the differences between a Digital Immigrant and Digital Native, it concludes with the idea that Digital Immigrants must change their language etc in order to reach their students.