Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes The growing prevalence of smartphones and tablets in homes and schools may be retarding kids' development of IT skills, according to an Australian study. The research in question was conducted by Australia's National Assessment Program (NAP_, a body that undertakes research of students' skills. Every three years, NAP assesses …
When my kids wanted their driver's license, there was no problem. They took a course. When they wanted a car.... things got interesting for them. We discussed it, we went out and bought a beater. A piece of crap that barely ran. To own the car, they had to fix it up and get it inspected. My rule was that I wouldn't work on it unless they were there and in the middle of it. They learned mechanics, some electrical, and other skills. I learned patience.
When the car was all done, it was theirs and you never saw two kids take better care of their cars than those two.
We did the same thing with a computer.. they spec'd it, we bought the parts and I helped them (more like watched) put it together and get it to run.
As technology marches ever on we have less and less need for the trappings of literacy and, well, other real-world skills. I offer Dan Simmons Illium/Olympos books for an example.
Although I apologise for actually typing these words I should have just left a small video.
As the years roll on it would appear that the film Idiocracy (2006) is becoming prophetic.
We "approach"??
“One of the reasons I’ve said I wouldn’t be talking to Vladimir Putin right now is because we are speaking to him from a position of weakness brought on by this administration, so, I wouldn’t talk to him for a while, but, I would do this. I would start rebuilding the Sixth Fleet right under his nose, rebuilding the military — the missile defense program in Poland right under his nose. I would conduct very aggressive military exercises in the Baltic States so that he understood we would protect our NATO allies…and I might also put in a few more thousand troops into Germany, not to start a war, but to make sure that Putin understand that the United States of America will stand with our allies… We must have a no fly zone in Syria because Russia cannot tell the United States of America where and when to fly our planes. We also have a set of allies in the Arab Middle East that know that ISIS is their fight…but they must see leadership support and resolve from the United States of America…we have the strongest military on the face of the planet, and everyone has to know it.”
Dumb kids on pulpits. Our only hope is that ISIS does a suicide strike on the whole bunch.
Use social media to promote a rock band??? That's digital literacy???????
How about setting up a PA system, configuring filters for reverb etc? That would at least be interesting.
Scrape the internet for mentions of the band and plot a histogram of hits by last-modified-date?
This test is an insult to the kids and to humanity. I would fail it in protest if I ever saw such a stupid thing.
My nephews live on their smartphones. They ski, film with a GoPro or film others, edit the clips into little films on their phones, and share them with friends, plus they post them to various social media sites. They are able to send nifty formatted invitations with embedded maps, etc. from their phones. They do not consider these to be IT tasks, but the way they live their lives.
I don't think any of the tests would have them blinking an eye.
These days, being able to work with a computer/tablet/phone requires zero technical knowledge. Users are only getting as dumb as the interface they are facing.
Back in the 'old' days, operating a computer required skills and as a consequence you learned a lot just by getting the hang of it.
Users are only getting as dumb as the interface they are facing.
Well, I think there's more to it than that. For example the teachers also have a big influence in all this.
When teaching this stuff it is important to stimulate curiosity, to motivate kids to dive deeper into the matter they're working with. I think that crucial part is severely lacking with "modern" education. Let's do a Google search; why not try to make the kids wonder how Google actually manages all that? How does all that Internet data end up "in" Google?
Still, I think matters are far worse than this. I mean: a Google search isn't merely an IT related task, it's also about being able to break a subject down into smaller parts. I'd even argue that it is (or should be) a bit of common sense at work: finding the relevant keywords.
How hard can that be I wonder...
This is exactly the same thing that happens with all technologies. As they improve and get easier to use, people lose touch with how the stuff works.
In the old days of lighting, you used lamps. Lamp lighting was a skill that involved understanding how to trim wicks and set them properly so that they burned evenly without charring the wick. Now, just flick a switch and you have leccy light. With LED lighting you don't even need to know how to change a lightbulb.
Until the 1970s you needed a rudimentary understanding of how a car worked to be able to use one. Sparkplugs fouled after a few thousand miles (in the beginning even less than 100 miles). You had to dick around with chokes, check the oil and water at every refuel, check for sparks and flat batteries were common. Now... you just drive for ten thousand miles and most people don't even know their cars have spark plugs or how an ignition system works.
Owning a valve (tube for USAians) radio was a deligh, but valves blew all the time. Owning a valve radio required knowing how to open it up and replace the valves. Transistor radios: just turn them on and magic happens.
So is anyone really surprised that the sprogs don't know how electronics and computers actually work?
Engineering used to be just everyday practical common sense, now it's a black art.
Just I don't need to know what a gerund or a phoneme is to be literate I don't need to know what a cpu or a function is to be digitally literate. It's just a matter of the users knowing how to use the (high-level) tools. Sometime we techies just have to accept that it's not about us.
We are always chasing the latest shiney shiney to make the learning relevant assuming that just because little Johhny/Mary has been using a 'puter since primary he/she knows the basics.
Just today I had to show students who have started their HSC year , how to add a footer, how to use heading styles and edit styles and create a table of contents for a document that make up 60% of their final mark. On Monday I will be showing the built in referencing tool, and how to turn stats on so they quickly do word counts as there are strict word limits on individual parts of the document. For some Ctrl+Enter, Ctrl+End , and Ctrl+Home, were a revelation as were Ctrl A,C,X,V,S & P !) .
In NSW some of the skills tested are explicitly taught in options in an elective (Info Software Tech) , not the core curriculum. And given the skills being tested not a single one will be addressed in the National Curriculum. Furthermore we are not likely to see a change in NSW for many many years.
For Simon & any parents of NSW students who are interested - google ICTENSW - find the post "Australian Curriculum: Technologies & Computational Thinking – Implications for NSW" & watch the podcast at the bottom of the page for BOSTES's official line in NSW.
Setting up a crowdfunding website - FMD - THATS a skill I use every day /sarcasm
Upload a video - noice - except in NSW all the video upload sites are blocked for students (except year 12) so how the hell do you teach THAT ?-
Getting data - check. Taught my kids how to use a weather data API - "Whats that skippy?", we can't get through the proxy server - well that was a waste of a double period.
DOLTS !
minor edits - I tend to write Kleistian sentences
If it wasn't for my senior Software Design & Dev classes (syllabus only slightly modified since 1999) I would go insane. At our place, English are supposed to teach Word, Maths Excel , and HSIE - Powerpoint. I often do lesson swaps with my collegues in the TAS(Home Econ & Industrial Arts) faculty - I will take a year 7/8 class and show them how do things they do not know how to do, and they will take my class in return (the few occasions my guys get a worksheet)
Edit - forgot to add "digital natives - my a**se", they know how to do SOME things well, the rest, just as clueless as my 90yo step father is
If you want to get fancy AND truthful, maybe you could call them "micropayment experts" (generally involving someone else's credit card)...
The teams working on micropayments (except for a few specialised high volume chaps and chapesses) are the ones at the bottom of the pile.
There was an IT job slowdown in my area at the time and I was working in a factory packing bread rolls. (this was in the 90's)
On one shift I was pared with this bloke who had an MSC in computer studies. We got talking. He asked... "How does a mouse work?"
I replied... "You what?"
He said, "When you move it on the table, how does it know to move the pointer?"
My reply (when I eventually recovered from being totally stunned) is sadly unprintable, even on an El Reg forum.
Do you know that?
I'm dimly aware that there must be some sort of protocol that runs over ps2 and that there is a Human Interface Device type in USB but I don't know the details of either. I believe that the buttons are microswitches and old ball mice had a ball which turned one up/down and one left/right roller but I'm not entirely sure what that roller connected to. A magnet moving in a coil? A grey coded wheel?
I definitely don't know how an optical mouse works, I would guess at a low res camera and some image processing but now I think about it that seems like a lot of processing power for something which has been cheap for quite a while. Even if that is how it works, I definitely don't know the details of how that image processing is implemented.
If your standard of what it means to know how something works is high enough, it is perfectly reasonable to not know how a mouse works.
"He asked... "How does a mouse work?""
Maybe there's a reason he was working in a commercial bakery instead of at Google. :-)
In all seriousness, I have noticed that most software development people have no idea how the computer itself actually works, or how to do any systems management. They write to their language's standard library, and everything gets taken care of. No need to think about how a network request is routed, what the database is doing when it's fed your God-awful SQL query, etc.
@Diogenes
Just today I had to show students who have started their HSC year , how to add a footer, how to use heading styles and edit styles and create a table of contents for a document that make up 60% of their final mark
I'm not even sure where to begin fact checking that statement, so I'm going to assume its the full & accurate picture.
Wow. Just wow. How can anyone credibly claim that education has not been dumbed down when A) 60% of the final mark is coursework rather than an exam, and B) when basic document formatting accounts for most of the grade.
Being the old giffer that I now am, I've paid sufficient attention to your post to realize I'm talking about the UK while you're talking about Oz, but I'm hoping there's some UK based teacher that can compare & contract current GCSE grading criteria with what you've said.
We just had our "year of code" so surely, surely, kids at UK schools have at least been taught something simple like Python?
@lucrelout ...
The course is called Society & Culture. The report is a 4k word thesis which is marked by the same people that mark the exam. Given the content there are not many examinable "facts" that can be regurgitated , but they demonstrate an in depth understanding, and application of the concepts
There are specific formatting requirements, which, if not complied with will result in a mark not much better than a basic pass,and these requirements are designed to stop thepfaffing around looking for the nicest font, making text unreadable, and allow the marker to concentrate on the content, not the presentation.
Iknow there are arguments that we shouldn't be teaching just office, but i since the beginning of this term i have no control over the software installed on my machines - we have to use a corporate build which is incredibly frustrating as the catalog doesn't contain what i have been using to teach programming - guess who will spend much of the long break rewriting resources.
The point I was trying tomake is that these kids have used office(whether that is good thing I leave to you) for nearly 12 years of schooling, and they had no idea thatctrl+ enter gives them a new page, or the use of styles.
To be honest, I think learning to use Office should only be a very minor part of ICT courses, it's just a stupid program, and a relative easy/polished one too. Probably sponsored by MS so that the kiddies only know about Office and none of the alternatives.
I'm happy that we've managed to get the school of our kids on LibreOffice, next step is upgrading the XP and vista machines to linux.
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