1.5 Generation Digital

In talking about immigration, the term 1.5 generation describes a person who immigrated as a young child and therefore functions well in the second country but has had experiences with the first. I feel that this term describes me well - in taking the digital literacy quiz, I noticed that I easily defined some terms and could intuit the meanings of others, but there were two I had never even heard: modding and smart mobs. My lack of interest in computer gaming likely explains my cluelessness about the first term, although I was able to identify World of Warcraft as a "massive multiplayer online game" even before reading the definition. The idea of "smart mobs" intrigues me; I suppose in a limited sense, I've used them for groupwork via the use of e-mail attachments and e-mailed link, especially combined with things like Track Changes. I'd be curious to see other examples of this, though.

Why do I feel that I might have some digital immigrant qualities? My family never had cable and still has dial-up internet with one phone line, so I didn't grow up on MTV or IM - I didn't begin IMing until well into college. While I played some video games when I was young, by high school I had decided that I had no time for them. The article "Digital Natives in the Classroom" lists these as defining experiences of my generation. On the other hand, I began using facebook early in its existence, I currently have three blogs and two e-mail addresses, I love Wikipedia and Google, and I prefer using Microsoft Review Toolbar to hard-copy editing.

In my own assessment, emergent doesn't describe my digital literacy - if phonemic awareness and decoding skills correspond to comfortability navigating a digital interfacing, I'm not still "sounding out" the digital world, even if I'm working in a second language.