Introductory Topic: Reflection

When initially tasked with evaluating my digital literacies and presenting them in a blog post, I didn’t anticipate how challenging it would actually be, despite considering myself highly computer competent. What I didn’t realise entering this module from an Economics background – there are various skills I rarely exercise, such as my creativity.

Reflection – Digital Residents & Visitors

After eventually getting to grips with WordPress, I published my first blog and was fairly happy with the outcome. I was also confident my stance on Cornu and White’s spectrum laid close to the ‘resident’ end.

However, after reading posts written by fellow students, I began to doubt some of my initial thoughts. Sinead’s post introduced me to a particularly interesting concept by the Higher Education Academy, clarifying that you may be a heavy user of the Web, but you are not a ‘resident’ if you choose to be passive. This provided food for thought on the element of personal choice in the res-vis typology. I choose to be passive in virtually every aspect of the Web, bar social media. This made me question that I must be more of a visitor than I originally concluded. Furthermore, Sinead’s impressive self-made video reinforced my need for experience in creative software.

Iarina’s post introduced me to Prensky’s revisited notion of ‘digital wisdom’. Upon researching this myself, I agreed with her point that it was probably a better concept helping to describe technological users today, although I do believe the res-vis concept to be very relevant still.

Conclusion

A few weeks into the module, it has already been interesting to experience learning from others with no face-to-face contact. Now I am familiar with the routine of the module, I am excited to discover more of the benefits to living and working on the Web.

(Word count: 300)

My comment on Sinead’s post: https://sineadboyle376.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/digital-residents-and-visitors/#comment-1

My comment on Iarina’s post: https://itd1e14.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/introductory-topic/#comment-2

Introductory Topic: The Types of Web Users

Digital Natives & Digital Immigrants

The internet was created over two decades ago. For some, this is just a small fraction of their lifetime; for others, they have not known a life without it.

This fact led Prensky (2001) to believe there existed a negative correlation between digital competence and age. Having grown up in the digital era, he suggested that the ‘younger’ population were more adept, thus ‘natives’ to technology and the ‘older’ population, having to learn new skills, were ‘immigrants’.

Figure 1: Digital Immigrants vs. Digital Natives (Unicheck Team, 2017)

Digital Residents & Digital Visitors

The notion of digital natives and immigrants was widely accepted until recent years. Cornu and White (2011) challenged the typology, stating that a “significant proportion” of the younger generation do not possess the high level of technological ability theorised by Prensky and in fact, the same variation in ability exists in all generations.

They didn’t however, disregard Prensky’s ideas entirely. Instead, they evolved his analogy to digital residents and visitors. In short, a visitor uses the Web as a ‘tool’ and are hesitant to use it as a ‘place’ to belong and hold an online identity. On the other hand, residents very much view the Web as a ‘place’, living a proportion of their lives online. The video from Jiscnetskills (2014) below describes the typology of residents and visitors more thoroughly.

Personal Online Identity

Upon reviewing the self-test, I would say my online identity lies toward the ‘resident’ end of the spectrum. I use the internet as a platform for staying connected with friends and family through social media daily. Having said that, there are definitely some areas where lack of experience could mean I identify as more of a ‘visitor’, for example, rarely participating in educational online communities.

As this module progresses, I look forward to seeing whether my identity changes.

 

References

Jiscnetskills (2014) Visitors and Residents. [online video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPOG3iThmRI&t=27s

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). Available from: https://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Unicheck Team (2017) Digital Immigrants vs Digital Natives: Closing the Gap. Available from: https://unicheck.com/blog/digital-immigrants-vs-digital-natives

White, D. S. & Cornu, A. L. (2011) Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. First Monday, 16(9). Available from: http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049%20https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/Zadar/Readings/Selwyn%20dig%20natives,%20Aslib%20Proceedings%202009.pdf