Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I am a Digital nomad. I am the small window of a generation that got stuck in between Digital Native and Digital Immigrant. I was not raise with computers from a young age, they came when I was about 10, the Internet as a household use, 16 or 17. I was young enough to be excited about the possibilities it held, but old enough for my instructors to not know how to fully utilize it's potential. Reading about the Digital Natives brought back some amusing stories from my high schools days.
I took German in high school as my foreign language. But due to my instructors illness we had one sub after another sub, after another sub so by the time my senior year came and a new instructor was assigned to our class I had not learned one lick of German. I had however, discovered German chat rooms on yahoo. And so when I was struggling with an assignment I would turn to my newly made German friends and seek their help. Well apparently their skills were far to advanced to pass off as my own work and my teacher rejected my assignment. And this I feel is where the clash of Digital Natives met Digital immigrants in my world. I had found a new way to obtain information. which I believe in schools now is encouraged to an extent. I made connections with people in Germany, who were in fact helping me learn more German. I was learning about their culture and talking about my actual German assignment. But it wasn't a typical means of receiving information within our school system yet. At that time, seeking help on assignments from the Internet was viewed as cheating, instructors wanted you to first look it up in card catalogs, books, journals, etc. The Internet was taught to be a second reference not the primary. In this way I feel like I was taught to be a digital immigrant. Since those high school days years ago I have developed more competence in using the computer and feel today that I am not a digital immigrant but a digital native. Well until I read this article and was not sure what a "hypertext" was. So I am that lost generation that got stuck in the middle.
I believe that this middle ground that I stand on, and my own experience with the conflict of to surf or not to surf (the Internet) will help me when working with my own students in being open minded and able to view their "outside the box" utilization of technology as creative problem solving.