Digital natives Digital Referees and Digital Voyeurs

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Digital Natives Vs Digital Refugees

If we understand that most teachers are digital immigrants and most students are digital natives then it becomes apparent that Teachers must be provided with education and training in order to help students to use their knowledge productively.


Unfortunately, it is also an image which puts fear into the hearts of teachers, as we begin to feel that our students know more than we know; and in turn question our own ability to manage their learning. I am convinced that teachers still have a pivotal role to play.

Evidence that supports the idea that, digital natives automatically know it all and are proficient in the uses of all web 2.0 technologies, simply is not there. Instead, we find that these students are aware of these technologies and can perhaps even navigate these online terrains but do not necessarily have any experience using them. Instead they tend to gravitate towards just one or two such as the social networking sites, Facebook and Myspace, and may not use the other E-tools much at all.

Wesley Fryer has a Web Blog where he discusses this in great detail Beyond the digital native / immigrant dichotomy and provides a great diagram that opens us up to the idea of the Internet Voyeur. Stephen Abram’s definition of the “Internet Voyeurs:”

An Internet Voyeur is someone who is aware of the tools, sites and concepts of the new ways of web ecology but hasn't really experienced them personally. They've read about blogs, maybe visited a few; they've heard about, for example, MySpace and The Facebook, or del.icio.us and Flickr but only understand what they look like from afar and on an intellectual level.
This is where teachers fit into the picture. Our job then necessitates that we assist learners to recognise the many ways that E-tools can help them with their studies, helping students to network and connect with groups and experienced professionals and enabling them to sort through the masses of data online improving their ability to differentiate fact from fiction and find reliable sources.

Many of the classrooms, I have had the honour of teaching in, are not equipped with the web 2.0 technologies in a way that they can be used in authentic tasks as a matter of course. Fortunately, this seems to be changing.

I hope to also change and continue learning of the potential for web 2.0 tools and the ability to know more than just how to use them but to understand how to keep up with new technologies and changes in the technologically advanced, online environment.