I struggled to think of an older digital native as the top-end of the "native" age group is 28/29 years old and most of my friends are around 18-22, however my friend Stephan who is 27 seemed to fit the bill. I've only known him in recent years however he is very technologically savvy and has used computers from his teenage years onwards to build programs and write code for websites, which he now does for a living.
For this task I asked him about his experiences of growing up with computers and he said that academically they were hard to come by in his primary school, but at secondary school they became slightly more accessible as technology improved and costs came down.
However his main experience with computers came from his first home computer that his parents bought him when he was 13, then getting later, higher-spec computers and upgrading them to meet his needs. He is very computer savvy and the first person I go to if I have a computer-related issue. As his job and social-life is so embedded within computers and technology, if he didn't have access to this then he wouldn't be the same Stephan that I know.
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The idea behind this question was to encourage you to throw off Prensky and supporters' age-based notion of 'nativeness' and look at facility, orientation and intensity of use.
ReplyDeleteE.g. many of the most involved 'guys' I know are in their 40s and 50s -they have been 'on the bandwaggon' since before personal computers and they have developed a 'second sense' that makes them pick up new ITC skills with apparent ease. However, they also 'speak immigrant' too (as opposed to natives -who arguably can't)