Digital Natives Reaction

     I thought the term "Digital Immigrants" was a completely accurate term that I was previously unfamilar with.  If you think of an immigrant, in the traditional sense, you are historically looking at someone who likely knows very little of the "language" and the culture they are migrating to.  Without the understanding of the language, immigrants will struggle and have a very hard time striving for success, even surviving without learning these skills to communicate. 

     When you are looking at Digital Immigrants vs. Net Generation, I found it interesting in the reading that it mentioned that even though the information is the same, they way it is learned and the area of the brain that the learning information is stored are in two complete areas, making learning technology a completely different process based on generation.  I don't think these two concepts are new, just maybe the terminology attached it to may be considered new.  If you look at every generation since the Industrial Revolution, I would surmise that a similar technological growth has eluded the previous generation who did not grow accustomed with a certain technology, because it wasn't available as they were growing up.

    A recent experience I had was I was attending a Education/Training Fair at Lehigh Valley Career Link.  The fair brought many unemployed workers looking to be retrained in other areas.  At a slower time in the fair, one gentleman stopped me on my lap top and made some small chat about it.  He told me he has never used a computer and is in his late 50's.  He took early retirement from a production based job at Mack Trucks, but after five years realizes his pension isn't enough to support him.  He began speaking with the representative from the community college about their CDL Class A driving program and found out that you would have a computer in the truck.  He was completely scared of technology and admitted it, but he also began to realize that without technology and understanding it, his skills were now obsolete.  We ended up directing him to a "Terrified of the Computer 101" non-credit course at Lehigh Carbon Community College to break down the barrier and hopefully begin the process of digital immigration.