Digital immigrants

I once heard my favourite educationalist, Sir Ken Robinson, refer to the notion of 'digital immigrants' being all those born before the 80’s; while all those younger generations that attracted an alphabetical moniker are known as 'digital natives'. I lost track after the Baby Boomers…are we Gen Y, X or ‘i’?

OK, so I may be showing my age when I can recall the Apple IIe, PacMan, VCR v Beta, cassette recorders, record players, electric typewriters and having to get up to change the channel; but I think I can legitimately claim a visa into the new age.

I am now the proud owner of all things ‘i’ – iPhone, iMac, iPod and iPad. Apparently, we also have an AppleTV, seemingly a product that escaped the ubiquitous ‘i’ prefix…not sure what happened there, Steve? (Clearly, that was a rhetorical question to which I am not expecting an answer…)

It is really ironic, though. Before I met my geek husband, I was a big Apple fan, still am. I had always owned Macs; disregarded PCs as inferior Mac mimickers. In our early dating days, when my geek boyfriend (as he was at the time) was courting me, he would deride my loyalty to such a product.  I, in turn, would just bag him endlessly and call him a geek. (Surprising really that he hung around…)

But marry we did and slowly over the years I have crept up on him like an insidious virus that just won’t go away…he is now a MacMan – wishing he was Steve Job’s love child.

With this as a family context, it is no wonder that our love child is in fact 'digitally indigenous' - approaching digital media with all the confidence of one with no fear, nor understanding of its potential. Which leads me to my next point…

Lily’s first foray into digital communications.

Her first email

The fact that she can’t read or write yet is superfluous to requirements, apparently. She can email and no one is going to stop her…

Thankfully it went to a good friend who could decode child-speak! (Sorry, Leah!)