Currently browsing category

Topic 1, Page 3

Digital “Visitors” and Digital “Residents”

Marc Prensky’s theory of ‘digital natives, those who have grown up alongside the web, ’ and those that haven’t the ‘Digital Immigrants’ has been widely criticised due to categorisation of individuals by purely age (Prensky, 2001). White and Cornu (2011) have proposed an alternate theory defining digital residents and visitors; what classifies one into each bracket is not their age but what motivates the individual for using the internet. Continue reading →

Digital ‘Residents’ or ‘Visitors’: Where do we Belong in the Continuum?

Whenever we use the internet, we leave digital footprints based on the actions we take and the pages we visit. The concept of digital ‘residents’ or ‘visitors’ enables us to better understand the impact of those actions and how it contributes towards our overall online identity (or lack of). This paradigm was introduced as a replacement for Prensky’s (2001) digital ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’. Continue reading →

Digital No-Man’s-Land

Previous blogs for the UOSM2033 module have written extensively on the subject of Digital “Visitors” and “Residents”, and have explained the theory in great detail. However, few have truly questioned this topic. My take on this topic is quite cynical, but hopefully it will stimulate some interesting discussions. From the literature and general discussion that I read, I personally believe that this is a ‘nontheory’. Continue reading →

Topic 1: Digital ‘Residents’ and ‘Visitors’

The main concept of digital ‘residents’ and ‘visitors’ were to categorise web users into how they utilised and accessed the web. Prensky’s (2001) theories believed that students growing up in the new technological age were the digital ‘residents’. The rest who were left to learn new skills became the ‘visitors’, these users had to adapt to technologies replacing traditional systems. Continue reading →

Do you live here? Or are you just visiting?

As someone who has been exposed to technology since birth, I relate to Prensky’s idea of the “Digital Native”- individuals who have grown up in the digital age and are therefore much more competent with technology. It’s second nature to navigate the internet daily, whether uploading a photo onto Facebook using my laptop, opening Maps to navigate somewhere with my phone or watching catch up TV on a tablet. Continue reading →