I’m an immigrant geek. This term is a take off from an article by Marc Prensky titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In this article Prensky states;

“Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.” Prensky coined the term “digital natives” for this generation of students, that speak the digital language as their first language. The older generation are ‘Digital Immigrants’ and probably have an accent when it come to this new digital language.”

I fall within the generation that are digital immigrants. I have learned this digital language fairly well but still carry with me signs of an accent. Prensky goes on to state;

“There are hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out your email; needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing on the screen); and bringing people physically into your office to see an interesting web site (rather than just sending them the URL). I‟m sure you can think of one or two examples of your own without much effort. My own favorite example is the “Did you get my email?” phone call. Those of us who are Digital Immigrants can, and should, laugh at ourselves and our “accent.”

This blog will be an attempt to help the digital immigrants, myself included, overcome our “accents” by providing thoughts, resources and helpful hints to help us speak this digital language.