Are digital natives a world-wide phenomenon? An investigation into South African first year students’ use and experience with technology Hannah Thinyane * Computer Science Department, Rhodes University, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa article info Article history: Received 20 November 2009 Received in revised form 1 February 2010 Accepted 5 February 2010 Keywords: Digital native Empirical investigation First year university student Country-specific developments Teaching/learning strategies abstract In 2001 Marc Prensky coined the phrase ‘digital natives’ to refer to the new generation of students who have grown up surrounded by technology. His companion papers spurred large amounts of research, debating changes that are required to curricula and pedagogical models to cater for the changes in the student population. This article reports on a study conducted in 2009 of more than 290 first year students at two South African universities. In this study, students were asked about their access to and use of tech- nology. The results portrayed a heterogeneous student population, with varying levels of access to and use of most technologies. One of Prensky’s key features of a digital native is their excitement with Web 2.0 based technologies. Participants in this study however, appear not to use such technologies, and to not be interested in using them in their studies. One tool that students had high levels of access to (98.1%), and use of is the mobile phone. Out of all uses of technology surveyed, tasks involving the mobile phone were ranked in the top two positions. Also when asked to rank different uses of technology particularly for their studies, three of the top five uses relied on a mobile phone. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Prensky (2001a, 2001b) coined the phrase ‘digital natives’ to refer to the new generation of students who have grown up surrounded by technology. Prensky uses this term as he views them as ‘‘native speakers of technology, fluent in the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet” (2005, p. 8). He differentiates digital natives from those not born into a digital world, but who have adopted many of the new technologies by referring to them as digital immigrants. The distinction between the two is that ‘‘as Digital Immigrants learn – like all immigrants, some better than others – to adapt to their environment, they always retain, to some degree, their ‘‘accent,” that is, their foot in the past” (2001a, p. 2). Prensky (2001a), p. 2 goes onto say that ‘‘our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language”. Prensky (2001b, 2009) suggests that not only do digital natives speak a different language to digital immigrants, but their brains are physically different as well, citing evidence from neurobiology, social psychology and childhood learning studies. He claims that this dif- ference means that no matter how much digital immigrant educators wish, it is impossible for digital natives to learn in the same way as the digital immigrants did (2001a, p. 3). Prensky’s notion that digital natives and digital immigrants brains are different is very controver- sial, with neurophysiologists and cognitive psychologists suggesting these differences stem from: working memory differences (Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Niederhauser, Reynolds, Salmen, & Skolmoski, 2000); fluid intelligence/spatial ability differences (Ackerman, Beier, & Bowen, 2002; Anderson, 2000); and physiological evidence of substrate uniformity (Eimer, Van Velzen, & Driver, 2002; Shimojo & Shams, 2001; Wright, Fields, & Harrison, 2000). His distinction between digital immigrant educators and digital natives has spurred a substantial amount of debate between academics from both developing and developed countries, around two key claims ‘‘ ... that a distinct generation of ‘dig- ital natives’ exists; and ... that education must fundamentally change to meet the needs of these ‘digital natives’” (Bennett, Maton, & Ker- vin, 2008, p. 777; Carlson, 2005; Culligan, 2003; Gibbons, 2007; Oblinger, 2003; Oblinger, 2006; Smith, 2009). However, as stated by Kennedy, Judd, Churchward, Gray, and Krause (2008), the premises behind these arguments require closer exam- ination before major overhauls are made to curricula and pedagogical models. As they pointed out, the arguments are predicated on the assumption that students entering universities have had a ‘‘comparatively universal and uniform digital upbringing” (Kennedy et al., 2008). Unfortunately this is not the case, in particular in developing countries such as South Africa. One of the features of apartheid was that South 0360-1315/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.02.005 * Tel.: +27 46 603 8640; fax: +27 46 636 1915. E-mail address: h.thinyane@ru.ac.za Computers & Education 55 (2010) 406–414 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers & Education journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu