Digital Native or Just a Consumer? Rethinking My Relationship with Tech
As a child of the early 80s, I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I was and to a certain extent still am fascinated with the latest technological wonders that are supposed to inform, entertain, and make us ever more productive and creative. I would love to have the latest phone, tablet, or laptop if I could afford them. At the same time, I also feel like my digital skills are rudimentary, having no mastery of any software or piece of tech. My journey towards digital literacy and technological adoption has not been a completely smooth one, but the journey continues.
The reading for the first week of class has caused me to reminisce about how effectively I acquired new digital skills and how emerging technology became integrated into my life and routines. My family got our first computer when I was 8 years old, and I learnt the basics of DOS prompt and how to load a simple video game. But those skills of using technology never expanded into learning how to manipulate or create. As I grew older, Nintendo and Sega became the more entertaining options, and the computer’s role was relegated to homework.
As I progressed through high school and university, I learnt how to research online, format essays in word processors, and make basic slide decks for presentations, but my skills never expanded. I know just enough to get by. I use technology, but I never learnt how to really capitalize on its full potential. I never understood it as such, but I was very much a consumer of technology and not a creator.
Growing up as one of the first so called ‘digital natives’ and having access to the technology from a very young age made me realize how important the educational pedagogy is to integrating these technologies into our lives in a useful and productive way. Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers talks about how Bill Gates’s access to computer technology and 10,000 hours of practice and experimentation, allowed him to build the skills necessary to create the future of computing. I had access to the tech but not the guidance or the dedicated time.
It makes me wonder if I really even am a digital native. In fact, scholars are asking the same question. Evans and Robertson (2020) make it clear that the debate on whether computer technology is beneficial or detrimental to educating young people is not simple or cut-and-dried. Problems like digital addiction and relying on computers to do the thinking for us are real concerns that have to be managed. However, the new digital technologies have allowed young people to learn, build, and create in ways that were impossible 20 years ago. The teaching methods needed to maximize the advantages while mitigating the risks have to be implemented universally and continuously updated and improved to meet the ever-changing circumstances.
The expansion of educational multimedia projects (EMPs) into almost every subject has allowed students to learn and explore in new and creative ways. (Rab Paterson, 2018) But the digital skills required to thrive in these projects need to be taught, reinforced and practiced by students and teachers alike. However, access to these opportunities is not distributed equally. Finding ways to shrink the gap between the genders, rural or urban, and economical disparities that influence individuals digital literacy is one of the biggest challenges in improving teaching pedagogy for the 21st century. But there is hope!
For the last 5 years, I have had the great honour to work with an amazing NPO in Japan that thinks about this problem every day and tries to create meaningful and effective changes to the Japanese school curriculum to safely integrate technology into public schools. The organization provides free teaching materials online, teacher training for pre- and in-service teachers, and advocated for curriculum improvements at the local and national level.
If you are interested, please check out
Minna No Code (Code For Everyone):
https://codeforeveryone.studio.site
It’s never too late to learn new skills and so, my digital literacy journey continues I hope yours does too.
Sources:
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown and Company.
Evans, C., & Robertson, W. (2020). The four phases of the digital natives debate. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2(3), 269–277. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.196
Paterson. R. (2018) THE POWER OF E.M.P.’S – EDUCATIONAL MULTIMEDIA PROJECTS
