I do not want to be an alien!

One thing that immirants hear the most is "Go back home!" I have experienced it in the country I was born. Being jewish in the Soviet Union could spark such remark suggesting that I should have gone to Israel. As a young adult, I followed this advice (remember: "soviet" means advice in Russian) and immigrated to Israel. Finally feeling home, I was invited, while talking on a public phone for too long, to go back to Russia. To avoid the confusion, I came to this country where, first of all, in 1997 I was met with the encourging " You are a violinist! We need violinists here!" (not kidding), and second, so far nobody yet questioned where my home is despite my accent and grammatic flaws. Anyway, being an immigrant for at least two times, I recently discovered that I can add to my ranks another "immigrant status", that of a digital immigrant. My first own piece of technology, a Toshiba boombox, which I bought on a concert tour in Prague in 1989, was expropriated by a Czeck custom officer who apparently liked it too much. Therefore, coming back to Moscow I was stuck with my old double-cassete player and hiccuping recording of Bach Double Violin Concerto. Due to my life history, my identity is very well defined by Marc Prensky in his article "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants." As someone who was born into the world of cord phones and typewriters, I possess a heavy "digital immigrant accent", and have to find a way to interact with the D-gens around me.

A few years ago I left a full-time symphony orchestra with its analog violin, trombone, English Horn, etc. technologies and dove into a public school where most of the kids have logged 10000 hours of playing video games versus my 10000 hours of diligent violin practice by effectively placing their string teacher in the position of learning his digital chops. While the methodology of digital violin playing is not yet invented, I try to impress my students by experimental music (Terry Riley), a pixel-like practice (old fashioned measure by measure repetition), and handing out extra lives (good grades) for beautifully played notes. Prensky's notion of "Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language" cuts into the field of music education just as sound as in all other disciplines. We can not stay aliens among the D-gens if we want music to be heard live outside of an Xbox.