Scene Three leaf

Possible Present

For those who see the social web and its constant stream of peer to peer information and multimodality as a degradation of writing from its past glory, there is solace in the current popularity of the digital native/ digital immigrant binary (Prensky 2006). Imagine: if learning these new, esoteric realms is impossible because of their year of birth, then it would be futile to try. It is possible that some sincerely believe themselves incapable of learning, but a more cynical view would be to credit self-diagnosed digital immigrants with a canny avoidance technique. The result of being a digital immigrant is that they can then hold up their hands helplessly when confronted with writing that is not on paper. Worse, they can with the "digital immigrant" seal of approval, avoid using anything but paper within the walls of their classrooms and trust their students to already know "all that computer stuff." Unfortunately, they don't. Also unfortunately for those who use this life strategy, the number of digital tools is expanding not contracting, and in time their stance will isolate then more and more from where learning about writing and writing scholarship happens.