I hope to take Michelle to this activity.

We hear a lot about the notion of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, a concept originally suggested by Marc Prensky in a paper by the same name (PDF).  It makes an presumption that those born after the widespread introduction of digital technologies are somehow out of step with the world of technology, while those who were born and raised in the digital age are naturally able to function within it.

Betcher provides several examples when the terms, with their neat definitions, do not apply. Seniors who know how to do limited things with technology but are not aware of the many possibilities and tools they can use. Teenagers who have the technology at home, but never figure out how to set it up. His own kids who are adept with certain technologies but get stumped when new ones, which don’t follow the patterns of use they are used to, are introduced.

He says

I think we make a huge error of judgment if we assume that just because a 14 year old takes a lot of photos with their phone and sends 300+ texts a month that they have some sort of innate “native” status. We seem to assume that because they use tools like Google to find information, that they understand how to do it well.   And we assume that because they might have 200 friends on Facebook that they understand what it means to live in a digital world.

He also points out that there are many adults who don’t fit within the age range for digital native but who are very adept at using all types of technologies. If one only looked at their skills then they could be considered digital natives.

He also argues that not only is the myth based on simple dichotomies, but the danger comes when we take these dichotomies as truths and then act accordingly, especially in our schools.

It’s a dangerous myth because it has some real implications for how we approach technology in schools.  If we believe that “all kids are good with technology and all adults aren’t”, which, in its most basic terms, is the kind of polarised thinking that the native/immigrant myth perpetuates, it can play out in schools with all sorts of bizarre unstated beliefs…

He argues that there are some kids who are just good at technology like there are kids who are good swimmers. I think the key is that those who are good with technology, both young and old, are eager learners, ready to experiment, and good at seeing, using, and looking for patterns.

So instead of saying Digital Native we should use Digital Generation when we want to refer to those who were born into the internet age.

But the recipe for a Digital Native:

1. life long learning skills

2. comfortable with experimentation

3. excellent at discerning and applying patterns.

Logging in today’s work.

In her dissertation, Leon argues that the term “Chicana” is a “political act of identification” that is rhetorical because it is ideological and “carries explicit political implications that mediate performance of what it means to be a Chicana” (abstrac ii-iii)

She examines not Chicanas which perform a “stabilized ‘rhetoric’” but instead places rhetoric as a “dependent variable” which “[alters] with and through Chicana production” (2-3).

She acknowledges that Chicana identity and rhetoric has been studied in poetic writing and wants to show how it is also articulated in other types of writing. (3)

She focuses on “Chicana identity as not only reflecting a reality but as an
epistemic that incites correlative actions” (4).

Leon identifies “commonalities or repetitious practices enacted by Chicanas” (15). She defines Chicana rhetoric as “a specific set of practices that are developed and employed within a particular context from which Chicana emerges” (15-16).

1. Shared Topoi and Symbols to Resist and to Use to Create
   1. recanting or retelling stories of symbolic figures
   2. topoi-border and mestiza (consciousness)–learning to deal with plurality and contrdictions
2. Use of poetics to theorize
3. Recognition and Utilization of Experiential Knowledge
   1. “acknowledges experience as a source of knowledge about the world” which leads “Chicanas to create or adopt theories to help invent ways to account for and build upon this epistemology and ontology” (17)
4. Invention and Intervention of Histories
   1. “the subject position of Chicana is itself created to stand in opposition, or to be more precise, operates in strategic tension with historical constructions of Mexican American and/or Latina. Chicana writers often create new narratives that interrogate and recast histories to enable activist subjectivities.” (18)
5. Connective and Collective
   1. “Chicana rhetoric employs the Nahua trope of difrasismo17, or coupling. The
      difference is that rather than operating on replacement or minimization, difrasismo
      creates relationships—sometimes spatial, or ideological. What this allows then is the
      production of affinities to be formed. Affinities and relations can also take place textually by placing different languages and discursive practices next and in between each other. I do not call this “multi-genre” but instead an act of textual affinities (i.e. Calafell, “Pro(re-…. Textual affinities may also take place by disrupting subjectivities
      based on chronos. ….affinities are also produced in Chicana rhetoric materially
       …. Chicana identity operates productively: when one affiliates as and with Chicana(s), it shapes the way we see the world and the way we act in it as scholars and activists.” (18-19)

Leon focuses on “how Chicana-ness is understood, defined, felt and experienced is actually part of a shared practice of Chicana rhetoric. To reiterate, I am looking at Chicana rhetoric because, as you can see, calling oneself a Chicana enacts an intentional chain of ideological and material signification. Therefore, what this dissertation does is to examine and explain the how of Chicana identity—how it operates rhetorically in the world, including the world of texts, histories, and action; and at the same time, the way it operates in the world with a particular set of outcomes and practices.” (19)