Where do we belong? (In response to the topic ‘Digital Immigrant vs. Digital Citizen’)

• When I first heard of these terminologies, my mind simply reflected my residential area in Pasir Gudang. As Pasir Gudang is an industrial estate, there are many immigrants coming to work at factories there. These include Vietnamese, Bangladeshis, and Indonesians. My place can be considered as a hot spot for them to find a place for shelter. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of its strategic-ness that my place now become an ‘international region’. But now, I am not supposed to talk about those immigrants in my hometown. But somehow it has some similarities with what I am going to say here.
  Actually, I had no single clue of what digital immigrant and digital citizen is all about. Until I browsed some articles on the Internet only I had some schemata of what to talk about here:
  
  Digital natives- those grew up with technology and they are natives to the digital world and technology.
  Digital immigrants- those coming to technology, as an immigrant come to a second language.
  
  So from here I can conclude that I am a digital immigrant because I was born without computers or nowadays' technologies. But, while I was reading these few articles on digital immigrant and citizen, this one man called Rupert Murdoch came very familiar. He is an America’s more prominent immigrant who lined up to support moves by President Bush to introduce ‘guess worker’ legislation and reform immigration laws. But recently, Rupert Murdoch turned his attention to another kind of immigration, which is digital immigrant. These were what he described digital citizens as:
  
  q They want their news on demand
  q They want control over the media
  q They want to question, to probe, to offer a different angle
  q They want to join in debate
  
  From his description, I could see that these digital citizens are bringing some changes to our culture. If we are made to obey to the media of what news we are supposed to know or what we are not supposed to, these digital citizens want their needs to be fulfilled. They want something more than the newspapers that are thrown at their doorsteps could serve them. That’s why we could see nowadays they are more into blogging than writing to editors, so that they can voice out what ever they want.
  
  Reflecting this, I dare say that it can give a big impact to education. We, as the digital immigrant teachers need to realize that we are confronting the digital natives. If back then, students were supposed to learn only what the teacher disseminated to them, I guess with all these technologies coming, the students want something more than what they are supposed to learn. They will become more independent, they will try to find out beyond what the teacher gave them, they enjoy changes and they have strong values and principles. I support Rupert Murdoch’s opinion that what is required is a complete transformation of the way we think about our product. So as teachers, we should be ready to change in facing these digital citizens. If traditional teacher-centred approach has long being given the priority in the teaching-learning session, now is the time for its abdication, which is by changing and turn our attention to student-centred approach. Only through this way we could serve the needs of the digital natives. And what is more important is that we should never shy to learn from these digital citizens. This is because; we could never resist the fact that teachers and learning is like a printer and its ink. They will live their lives with learning. So, in order to be competent in teaching digital citizens, we should never be afraid of changing our methods of teaching and learn new things that will make us equipped and up-to-date with technology. We may not be digital citizens. But at least we should try by all means to be at the same level as them. Well, why not? Sometimes, a non-native English speaker can be as competent as the native one, so why can’t we?