There's no question about it. I am definitely a digital immigrant. Why, for my first few years working in the library at UNC-Chapel Hill, the fanciest piece of technology that we used was a microfiche reader. While I was there, the cataloging department got its first OCLC terminal. The reference librarians were allowed to look at it during a scheduled tour, but we were strictly not to touch it!
Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Athens in 1976, and there was an OCLC terminal that the public could use!
And in the almost 28 years that I've worked in Alden, things have changed drastically. In my first position in 1979, my typewriter wasn't even electric!
But by 1987, that was quite different. I started doing online searching, and we got our first CD-ROM. Of course, then the web came along, and our roller coaster ride with technology has never stopped. Virtual reference is especially something that I've enjoyed growing with.
So I am a digital immigrant. And I certainly have many of those characteristics. Most of all, I view technology as a tool. If it can make life easier for me or for our patrons, I love it. Using software to balance my checkbook or schedule a meeting is great. Searching for information is so, so, so much easier than it used to be (although it's nearly impossible to keep up with all of the sources that are potentially useful.) And I love Flickr! I had already started to use it before this summer, but I've learned a lot more about it this week.
Another thing that makes me a technology immigrant is that I don't love playing with technology just for the heck of it. I have to know that I'll need it before I'm willing to take the time to learn it. I do appreciate my younger colleagues who experiment with new technologies before it's clear how they'll be useful!
Now here's the rub. Often, when you hear people talk about digital immigrants and digital natives, there's an assumption that digital natives know more about technology than digital immigrants. Now generally they do know more about social networking software, but I don't find that our undergraduates are necessarily the technology whizzes that popular opinion would have us believe. So that's the piece of the digital immigrant/digital native lore that grates on my nerves sometimes!
So maybe it's more complicated than that. Here's another way to look at it:
Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Athens in 1976, and there was an OCLC terminal that the public could use!
And in the almost 28 years that I've worked in Alden, things have changed drastically. In my first position in 1979, my typewriter wasn't even electric!
But by 1987, that was quite different. I started doing online searching, and we got our first CD-ROM. Of course, then the web came along, and our roller coaster ride with technology has never stopped. Virtual reference is especially something that I've enjoyed growing with.So I am a digital immigrant. And I certainly have many of those characteristics. Most of all, I view technology as a tool. If it can make life easier for me or for our patrons, I love it. Using software to balance my checkbook or schedule a meeting is great. Searching for information is so, so, so much easier than it used to be (although it's nearly impossible to keep up with all of the sources that are potentially useful.) And I love Flickr! I had already started to use it before this summer, but I've learned a lot more about it this week.
Another thing that makes me a technology immigrant is that I don't love playing with technology just for the heck of it. I have to know that I'll need it before I'm willing to take the time to learn it. I do appreciate my younger colleagues who experiment with new technologies before it's clear how they'll be useful!
Now here's the rub. Often, when you hear people talk about digital immigrants and digital natives, there's an assumption that digital natives know more about technology than digital immigrants. Now generally they do know more about social networking software, but I don't find that our undergraduates are necessarily the technology whizzes that popular opinion would have us believe. So that's the piece of the digital immigrant/digital native lore that grates on my nerves sometimes!
So maybe it's more complicated than that. Here's another way to look at it:
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