Digital+Natives

media type="custom" key="2904733" A **digital native** is a person who has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3 players.

Today's students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened between previous generations. A really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This event is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century.

Today's students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today's average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (//not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV//). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.