Friday, September 25, 2009

Digital natives

A few weeks back, students from two institutions in Quebec – the Édouard-Montpetit College (CEM) and the National Institute of Aeronautics (ENA) – had to answer a survey named Who are the real digital natives? The first thing to know is that the questionnaire was available on internet so the participants needed to be already familiar with the computer technology. There were 48 students from ENA who answered and only 40 from CEM which could prove that ENA students are more comfortable with technology.

Despite of this, the data that was gathered shows that ENA students are more versatile with their computer since 75% use it to do both work and entertainment while only 59% are able to do so. The survey also showed that in 95.7% of the cases, ENA students love or at least accept technology while the percentage is of 92.3% for the CEM students. The survey showed that 2.6% of CEM students are not comfortable with electronic devices while this number drops to 0% of the ENA students.

With all the data captured we can say that the ENA students could be categorized as ‘’Digital Natives’’ and the CEM students as ‘’Digital Immigrants.’’ What these terms mean is that the CEM students had to adapt more and still have to adapt to technology when the ENA students are more familiar and comfortable with it.

No comments: