Am I a Digital Native?

Since I can remember, my family has always had a computer in our house. I always fought with my brothers about who got to use it first and for how long. Along with having a computer we also had video game systems that we played often. Although I was pretty young, I cannot remember life without computers or the internet for that matter. For this reason I would consider myself a digital native.

When I took the digital native quiz, I knew almost every term that was presented. Although there were some that I was unfamiliar with, I am sure in the near future I will have some type of exposure to them. It seems as though there is always something new coming out so it is very difficult for anyone to know every type of technology that is available at any given time.

In class we discussed emergent literacy and what it means for students. From the book and discussion I would word emergent literacy as the processes students go through in discovering new information. In terms of my own digital literacy I would say that I go through an emergent stage with each new technology I come in contact with. I usually have to mess around with a new technology when I first encounter it. Just at the Tompkins book discusses students scribbling as a stage of emergent literacy, my random clicking on different buttons of new technologies is my form of scribbling (pg 91-92). As I become more familiar with the devises of the technology I am able to navigate myself around to get the most out of the technology. This is similar to the way students move from emergent to beginning and eventually fluent literacy. It is a discovery process and builds with exposure and experience. With new technologies there are also tutorials and help tools that help the process, much like the role that teachers and even parents can play for students in emergent literacy. For example, Tompkins lists instructional methods for emergent literacy as having students manipulate sounds and encouraging children to make text-to-self connections (pg. 97) These types of instructional methods can also be reworded to characterize the methods used to move through emergent digital literacy. Students need to manipulate the tools of the technology to get a feel of how they function and they also need the encouragement to connect the information to what they already know. Digital literacy is a process, just like any other type of literacy and it is something that students need to develop on their own with encouragement and guidance.