Junior year of high school, students form the all the Virginia Beach Public Schools had an opportunity to apply to go to a specialized class at a technology school. I got accepted and attended this engineering class for my Junior and Senior year of high school, but I still went to my regular high school for my basic classes for half the school day. Attending this class was a major technology upgrade, because it had different types of machines and various computer programs that I had never heard of before. One program we used frequently was called Inventor, and at first it was one of the most confusing things I had ever seen before. You could create various shapes and objects, all which you had to start from scratch and actually create them yourself. I remember the first day we started using it, I was so dumbfounded and thought I would never be able to figure out how it works. It had so many different functions, options and icons that I just stared at the program for a very long time. I am usually pretty good with technology and could quickly figure out how to make things work, even if I have never really seen it in my life, but this program was more complex than I thought. After a couple weeks of using it, I was finally able to figure it out for the most part, but every time for the next two years that I used it, I figured out new things about how it works or how to create new designs. This whole class opened my eyes to all types of high quality technology that I would not have been exposed too if I never took the class.
Claire Couillard wrote about how she was growing up when the early forms of new high tech technology started emerging. She stated the fact that she was able to figure out new technology by trial and error, which is how I had to figure out Inventor. Most of the time my trial and error consisted of me just messing around, and wondering what does this button do kind of thing. The difference between our stories though, is the fact that she had her family and friends go to her for help, where I went to my friends for help.
Being digital literate is now considered to be its own language, and like any language, it might come easy to some people but to others it would be extremely difficult. A person that would be digital literate would be someone that knows how some of the buttons and icons work if you would press them, and people who read a computer program. There are different levels of digital literacy, and most people know the basics of how to use a computer. A digital native is someone who has grown up with all these new forms of digital technology, and when something new comes out it usually wouldn’t take too long to figure it out. Mainly the younger generations are digital natives, but the people who didn’t grow up with the new digital technology are starting to try and learn how these new things work.
The most effective evidence to prove the age range of people who are digital natives would be to conduct a survey. It wouldn’t be too accurate, unless you surveyed everyone in the entire world. Internet would also be a good source of evidence. I am a digital native, because I’ve grown up in the time when all this new digital technology started appearing, my mom on the other hand did not, but she is digital literate because she is trying to learn how to do most of her work on her laptop. Since she didn’t grow up with all these new digital things, it is difficult for her to figure out what to do so she always had to come to me for help. To me, the best kind of evidence is the kind that comes from past experience because it then would sound more real and it would be easier to explain, then going off of some random website you found.
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