Response to The Myth of the Digital Native blog:
http://betch.edublogs.org/2009/01/06/the-myth-of-the-digital-native/
In my role as school librarian, I am often asked to assist students with technology issues: everything from email (setting up an email account, attaching, opening an attachment) to MS Word (copy/pasting, formatting, margins, templates…..if I had a dollar for every kid who has asked me how to double space…!) to citing electronic/web sources to web searching.
My role is to apply technological bandaids – I can show them a quick fix or tip, but to go to the source of their technological illiteracy would require more time and resources than we currently have. Just as our vocational programs have skills checklists, I wish our students graduated with completed technology checklists!
Some of the issues I see :
E-MAIL. For students to learn how to properly use email, I would give them school accounts (sorry, Mike!!), train them, and have them email their assignments and questions to their teachers. Right now, our policy on student email is pretty murky. Some teachers allow (even mandate) it but some systems (like yahoo) don’t have full functionality in the building. When our students enter the business world, they will find that everything from supply ordering to timecards to meetings will be done using email, so we would be performing a valuable service in teaching proper use and etiquette of email communication.
INTERNET. Most kids who think they are web-savvy really aren’t. Their search skills are rudimentary at best: they don’t know what advanced/Boolean/focused searching is, for instance, or what a sponsored site is, and their analyzing skills are nil (site authorship, sponsorship, bias, veracity, currency). Many students freely copy and paste from the internet and pass in the work as ‘theirs,’ not realizing – or not caring? – that the same plagiarism rules apply to electronic information. Formal workshops on internet searching, research, and evaluating websites are a start. Gather, organize evaluate, utilize….
MS OFFICE I just had a class of 19 sophomores, none of whom knew how to format a picture as faded background underneath text. For them, MS Office is no more than a fancy typewriter, as they don’t know how (or even when) to use most of Word’s features.
I agree with the comment that these so-called Digital Natives are actually more like “Digital Dilettantes.” They talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk.
By: Mr. H on May 30, 2009 at 10:37 am
Trish, there is a checklist (of sorts). It’s called the National Education Technology Standards (or NETS). There is one for teachers too! All of the issues that you have raised are addressed in those standards. I think, too, that there are plenty of resources that are being shared by other teachers that are appropriate that can then be adapted to your specific situation to help teach/meet those standards.