The University of Arizona’s Learning Technologies Center (LTC) collects feedback and experiences from a year of deploying blogs into formal and informal learning environments.

"The applications are as varied as the disciplines adopting blogging. Faculty have introduced blogging to: promote peer review, foster student-to-student, student-to-faculty, and faculty-to-student interaction; discuss course readings; promote discussion and public comment; address class concerns; extend learning beyond the classroom; and develop writing skills because it encourages students to reflect on what they compose."

Learn more about versatile methods of blogging for learning ...

Does the use of blogs and wikis ease or enhance the struggle of authors driving towards publication? Read the thoughts of McKenzie Wark, professor of media and cultural studies at New School University as he undergoes this process for his new book GAM3R 7H3ORY.

Also read the thoughts of Kathleen Fitzpatrick in a guest article for the Valve on the future of academic publishing and tenure. Fitzpatrick calls for new forms of scholarly ouput that suit the actual requirements of academia in an age of digital media:

"If this is how we consume research in the humanities—read the book’s introduction for the overall argument; read the chapter that most clearly applies to our own questions for the detailed analysis—then is the production of the book itself no more than a vanity?"

So how good is your thumb coordination? Do you function best when networked with others, prefer graphics before text, or learn most succesfully when listening to music? Do you read a software manual instead of assuming the progam will teach you how to use it? The answers to these questions, along with the obvious question of your age, can determine if you are a digital native or digital immigrant.

The discussion of these types was introduced for public debate by educational gaming entrepreneur Marc Prensky in 2001 in his two-part (1:2) investigation of how students have "radically changed" as the result of pervasive digital technologies. Prensky states 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."  Five years later the debate rages on.

A July, 2006 Sunday Times report on "The next step in brain evolution" asks the question:

"Where is it all leading? Only one thing seems clear: changes propelled by the digital world are just beginning. Indeed, one of the markers between the natives and the immigrants — it’s not simply a question of age — is the intuitive acceptance of rapid digital change."

But there are plenty of critics of these categories of description. Tim Stahmer, learning technology specialist for a school district in Washington DC writes in his blog Assorted Stuff: "I think it’s just about time to retire the whole digital native/digital immigrant analogy ... lately I've been thinking it's become an impediment to the discussion of how to use technology for teaching and learning. "