The youngest digital immigrant I know would be Melanie, who I used to work with. She is 33 (31 at the time) and worked on the shop floor, however got promoted to work in the office where she needed training on the most basic of computer skills having "never really used a computer before", in her own words.
She picked up the skills quickly as the system was a very basic one, however she still had what Prensky calls her "accent", doing things such as stock-checks on paper when they could have been done on a hand-held terminal and then uploaded to a computer, or drafting letters on paper before typing them up on the word processor.
She had little confidence in the computer, especially as it was quite temperamental and crashed a lot therefore losing work sometimes. Although I don't work there anymore, she recently told me that the systems have now been upgraded and she is more confident with it, even starting to draft her letters straight onto Microsoft Word!
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I think it's interesting that her confidence related to reliability. That's sensible isn't it? I think that computers are still too unreliable. If they wer vehicles they would all be deemed unroadworthy wouldn't they?
ReplyDeleteOr is that an immigrant speaking?