As I work to integrate more technology into my daily classroom lessons, I begin to ask myself the question - are kids truly technologically savvy? Sure, they know how to use their iPods to listen to music, post to Instagram, and play Candy Crush, but day after day I discover what I believe to be a task every novice computer user should know, that they do not. For example, just this week I found several students unfamiliar with how to attach a document to an email. Since this is going to be the way of their world, I think it's important that we not only use/teach the fancy bells and whistles, but not forget about the "basics" as well....
http://visual.ly/how-tech-savvy-are-our-kids
I'm with you on that! There are too many assumptions about "digital natives". It's tricky being an educator--their skill sets are so varied!
ReplyDeleteI'm right with you on the. Without a doubt, there needs to be a required computer/general student skills class for all incoming freshman. We can cover things like how to use the computer, how to search, basic web apps that we expect the students to use, study skills, organizational skills...there's just no time to do a lot of this stuff in class and a lot of students are experiencing very little success because they lack these basic skills. I know this would not be necessary at every high school, but it is certainly necessary for our student population based on my experience.
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