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ABSTRACT. 21th century education lives a digital divide from many aspects in the view of learner and teacher characteristics. We face with digital natives who born to a digital culture and differ from digital immigrants of industrial age. On the other hand, a new group, digital settlers rise with different behaviour and attitude characteristics by the use of technology to keep up with the times. It is quite important to determine the aformentioned groups in this digital divide world and promoting digital immigrants to acquire characteristics of digital natives in order to reduce the conreoversy between them. In this direction this study purposes to draw attention to digital native and digital immigrant characteristics, reflections to learning and teaching experiences and also the concept "digital settler".
Keywords: Digital native, digital immigrant, digital settler, digital divide.
SUMMARY
Introduction: Today, in this age of intensive digital division, it is important to determine these groups well and to take necessary precautions especially in educational environments. In this way, the digital native characteristics owned by digital immigrants and digital settlers will minimize the disagreement and lack of communication between the learner and teacher in educational environments. In this respect, in the present study, the reflections of the digital native and digital immigrant characteristics into learning-teaching experiences are discussed with the concept of digital settler.
Digital Native, Digital Immigrant and Digital Settler: Marc Prensky, who first introduced the concepts of digital native and digital immigrant, emphasized the importance of reconsidering education both for future and for the past. Prensky (2001) states that learners have changed radically in recent years; that they do not share the profile of a learner involved in the education system; and that they are "native speakers" of the digital language of the Internet, computers and video games. It is pointed out that although those in the position of a teacher were not born in the digital world, they have benefitted from new technologies in their lives and thus they are "digital immigrants". In this respect, it is reported that it would be beneficial to take sharers into consideration with respect to the dimensions of system, teacher and learner.
The group which is not digital native but has to follow the technology in order to keep...