CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the fundamental reason for conducting the study. It covers research background, research problem, research objective, scope and limitation, research significance, the definition of key terms. Each point is presented as follows: 1.1 Research Background The condition of living in a digital culture is called as digitality. Aspects of digitality include the people who use the internet and technology to find information such as through search engine and communicate through web blogs and email. Prensky (2001) argues that there are two groups of society “Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants”. Digital natives are people who are born in the digital era. They are one of the modern people who could not live without mobile phone. They became an individual and addicted to the mobile phone where they always check the phone every time. In contrast, the digital natives have different behavior from digital immigrant. According to Tapscott (2009), there are many characteristics of digital natives such as freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed, and innovation. Digital immigrants are people who are born before the existence of digital technologies. They tend to have no social account and no email account. Digital immigrants prefer direct communication or face to face meeting compared to its counterpart. Reading papers, magazines, and documents are done manually, they 1 seldom interact with the screen and online technology. However, it is possible for them to integrate technology into daily life. Technology has completely changed the way people live. Knowing about gadget at a very early age children become more digitally and create a new culture using online communication than do in person. For this reason, all aspects of our lives have changed such as in the world of education. Many teachers use technology to support the learning process. Besides, students can search about anything in their mobile phone. By using technology, teachers and students have a variety of learning tools at their fingertips. Empirically, there have been many researchers that have already done the research about Digitality Level. One of them is Wijaya (2011) who did the research about “A Study on Digitality Levels of Elementary School English Teachers in SDN Dawuhan Sengon I Purwodadi, Pasuruan”, she found that the digitality levels of Elementary school English teachers in SDN Dawuhan Sengon I Purwodadi – Pasuruan was “Fair” because most of them got score 55-69. The second researcher found that the digitality levels of students in SMAN 1 Sampang Madura were “High”. This results of the research found by Irsyad (2011) in the research “A Study on Digitality Levels of High School Student in SMAN 1 Sampang Madura”. The third researcher is Permana (2012) in his research entitled “A Study on The Digitality Levels of Senior High School Students at MA Muhammadiyah 01 Malang”, it is found that the digitality levels of senior high school students at MA Muhammadiyah 01 Malang were 80.4. It means that they were categorized in “High”. 2 The last researcher is Agusti study (2011) in the research of “A Study on The Digitality Levels of State of Junior High School English Teachers in Kab.Malang”, the study found that the digitality levels of state of junior high school English teachers in Malang Regency were “high”. The mean score of the English teachers was 76.4. This research looks similar to Agusti (2011) ) in the research of, “A Study on The Digitality Levels of State of Junior High School English Teachers in Kab.Malang”, the difference of this research is done in Tulungagung Regency and at different level of education that is in Senior High School. Then, the researcher want to know the new phenomenon in digital era. Based on the previous studies above, the researcher would like to investigate the digitality level of public of senior high school English teachers in Tulungagung Regency. 1.2 Research Problem Based on the statement above, the problem of the study is formulated as follows: “What is the digitality level of public Senior High School English teachers in Tulungagung Regency?” 1.3 Research Objectives The objective draws the expected outcomes in accordance with the research problems. It is as follows: To describe the digitality level of public of Senior High School English teachers in Tulungagung Regency. 3 1.4 Research Significance The significance of this study can be viewed from both theoretical and practical aspect to describe below. ➢ Theoretically, it is expected that this research can be used as emphasis to determine a digitality levels of English teachers. ➢ Practically, this research expected to give a contribution to the teachers about the digitality levels of English teachers. Based on this study, the teachers are able to know about the different way of teaching. Besides, the teachers can get an appropriate technique to develop digitality levels. 1.5 Scope and limitation The scope of this study is the digitality level of public of senior high school English teachers in Tulungagung regency. The writer limits her discussion on digitality level of English Teachers. 1.6 Definition of key terms To avoid misunderstanding of the definition key terms which are used in this study the writer would explain the definition of the key term, they are: ➢ Digitality : Digitality (also known as digitalism) is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture (Negroponte’s,1995). It refers to the condition of people who use the internet and technology in all part of life. ➢ Digitality Level : Digitality level is position or degree of value in the condition of living in a digital culture (Oblinger, 2003). 4 It can be concluded that digitality level is a degree of value which can measure of the condition someone’s life in a digital age. ➢ Digital Immigrant : those who were not born in the digital world and had adopted many of the new technologies later in life, were called the Digital Immigrants‟ (Prensky, 2001a). It can assume that digital immigrants are people who were born before the existence of digital technology and did not grow up in the digital age. ➢ Digital Native : Digital native is a term for people who were born in or after 1980, who grew up in technology (Prensky, 2001a). It refers to a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technology, and they can grew up in the technology. 5 .