Again, my house tends to be "gadgeted" out. I don't know whether it's because I grew up with so many gadgets as I was growing up (when they were around, we owned two different Commodore computers, and we owned a number of video cameras), but I've always felt comfortable around them once I managed to figure out on my own how they worked.
In his article, Pensky makes the argument that since the kids of today grew up around this technology they're "natives" vs. us older folks who didn't who are "immigrants." What Pensky doesn't take into account is how the kids use the technology versus how us older folks use it.
From my observation of the kids that I deal with on a regular basis at work and at home, although they might be technologically savvy in some respects such as text messaging and Facebook, anything beyond that they are very much technologically illiterate and we still need to teach the students what to do. As an example, this past week I've had to teach three different classes of seventh graders how to double space their papers that are due next week.
The older folks tend to use the technology to be social, but not in the same way, as well as true information retrieval. For example, a lot of my morning daily routine involves looking at news sites and blogs so that I know what's going on in the wide world outside of my personal universe.
My four year old son has picked up some of the uses of the technology already, but at his age it's limited -- on his mini tablet he plays games and watches videos, and on the big TV he watches Netflix (he announced this week that his favorite show was "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." Yes, I've unintentionally started raising a "brony"). As he gets older, will he necessarily get beyond that? If I teach him along the way, I hope so. I would hope I would be able to teach him how not to abuse the privileges of having this available to him, so that he can be a proper digital citizen.
#edcmooc
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