Digital Natives

Marc Prensky coined the term Digital Immigrants and Digital Native.

I listened to Marc Prensky’s fantastic keynote titled, “Engage Me or Enrage Me” at the NECC conference last July. I recently listened to Bob Sprankle’s Bit by Bit podcast which captured Marc’s similar keynote at the Christa McAlliffe Tech conference.

It inspired me to post these notes, mostly for my future reference, although you may find them interesting too.

About Digital Natives Marc says:

By the time the digital natives of today graduate from college at age 21 the average native will have:

• Played 5,000 – 10,000 hours of video games


• Sent 250,000 – 500,000 emails & IM


• Spent 10,000 hours on their cell phone


• Watched 20,000 hours of TV


• Watched 500,000 commercials


• Only 2,000 - 5,000 hours will be spent reading

This is the same generation that currently

• Downloads 2 billion ring tones every year


• Downloads 2 Billion songs a month


• Sends 6 Billion text messages a day

About Digital Immigrants Marc says:

• Digital Immigrants leave a foot in the past…Our digital immigrant accent…


• Immigrants print out their emails


• Email itself is starting to become an immigrant accent


• Immigrants don’t have and perhaps resent instant messenger


• Immigrants don’t go to the internet first


• Immigrants expect “perfect” instead of “good enough”


• Immigrants think handwriting is important.


• Think “real life” only happens off line.


• Think learning is work.

I have a lot to learn about the Native language.