Digital Natives

Marc Prensky is acknowledged to have coined the term digital native in his 2001 work “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” In his article, he assigns the term to a new breed of student entering educational establishments.

According to Wikipedia the term draws an analogy between a country's natives, for whom the local religion, language and folkways are natural and indigenous, and immigrants to a country who often are expected to adapt and assimilate to their newly adopted home. Prensky refers to accents employed by digital immigrants, such as printing documents rather than commenting on screen or printing out emails to save in hard copy form. Digital immigrants are said to have a "thick accent" when operating in the digital world in distinctly pre-digital ways, when, for instance, they might "dial" someone on the telephone to ask if his e-mail was received.

In Chesterfield County Public Schools we educate approximately 59,000 digital natives every day. We are making every effort to bridge the digital divide between digital natives and digital immigrants by expanding our communication tools in a safe and user friendly cyber environment. Last week we unveiled our new and improved web site, which includes 21st century communication and social networking tools like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

I encourage you to browse our web site. In a world saturated with negative images and messages, I plan to use the 140 characters allotted by Twitter to post positive and encouraging quotes.

In return, I would like for you to share your favorite quotes with me and our readers.