It’s in the Numbers
I just discovered that I could look up people on Facebook by graduating class (I know, I’m pretty slow to discover this). What I found really interesting is how you can see the rapid adaptation of technology by looking at how many Facebook accounts there are from each graduating class. I graduated in 2001 and if I go 2 years in either direction there is a pretty significant shift in numbers.
Number of 1999 PCHS grads on Facebook: 49
Number of 2003 PCHS grads on Facebook: 175
I think these numbers are also reflective of the shift in technology education. Megan and I have noticed that many people (but certainly not all) just a few years older than us aren’t very computer savvy. They lack solid basic computing skill such as being fluent in MS Word or PowerPoint or finding things on the net.
Part of the problem is how computing is taught. Instead of teaching computing concepts and principles, most people are taught step by step (click here, drag this to there, etc.). I could probably write a whole other post on what technology education should look like. But I’ll spare you the nerd factor for now.
Couldn’t agree more. Instead of understanding how something like a writing program works and then begin able to use ‘any’ writing program, users can’ find that ‘one symbol’ to do that ‘one thing.’
Last night we were a the Williams’ house and Jamin said that he downloaded Firefox to his parents computer and then changed the icon to the IE “E” icon for they would know what to click on to see web pages. For my mom I renamed Firefox to “Web Browser” for there would be little name association. Though, now she probably thinks that the internet is inside of Firefox so if Firefox doesn’t work the internet must be down!
I’m fairly annoyed at pictures on cell phones relating to phone numbers. Like that one company “who’s your top 4″ or whatever. I care so little that I don’t know the # or the company name. Good! I also feel compelled to dislike any operating system that looks like a visual playground. I don’t care to know which file type I’m looking at in my file browser by looking at it’s pretty icon. It has an extension and it’s OFF by default in Windows. That isn’t cool. Then when ’something happens’ most everyone is confused b/c they don’t know what .com/.exe/.bat/ means.
But, we are alike those older than us in the sense that there are programmers out there who understand things on a much deeper level than ourselves. I’m sure they sit around their lunch tables and complain about how mostly everyone has no idea how the um, whatever talks to that thingy with the microprocessor string theory unit thing’o'mo’jobber. *shrugs*
Long comment. Sorry.
You assessment of how computing concepts are taught is correct. I grew up on computers in the personal computer heyday (the 1980s). Anyone who wanted to use a computer had to figure all this stuff out themselves. Having one of the first computers in our town, my dad learned to poke his way around as did I. He learned all of the shortcuts to the applications he needed and was able to figure it out when he needed to. He was pretty good at navigating DOS and could maintain his files easily.
But talking to him today, I have to go step-by-step through each action at least twice to teach it to him. I don’t think it’s just because he’s older, though. I blame the mouse-based user interface. When things got “easy”, many more people were able to use computers but without learning the “why” it works that way. It amazes me to see people highlight text and go to the menu to copy it when there is a quick keyboard shortcut to copy it to the clipboard. Operating systems stoop to the lowest common denominator and even smart people stop trying to remember stuff.
> Megan and I have noticed that many people (…) just a few years older than us aren’t very computer savvy.
Being pretty computer savvy (web developer, after all), I had this vision of a Spongebob Squarepants episode where Patrick is driving and arguing with Spongebob. Spongebob rips up Patrick’s driver’s license and suddenly Patrick no longer knows how to drive. Now if I can just figure out how to post this…
no, spare nothing. i want to read that post.
please, nerdfriend. give us what technology education could do better.
i remember pchs would only allow juniors and seniors on the internet at one time. but i was a sophomore taking the shuttle bus to east campus so i got to get an internet pass card. it was my pre-cursor to a driver’s license.
can you believe they actually had to show me how to do a search???
google wasn’t even around then! (or if it was, it wasn’t the giant it is today).
Ha, I remember the crazy internet rules at PCHS. I think I actually had to have a “internet license” to get online. And those were the days when there were like 10 different options for search engines. Google was just another name among Yahoo, AltaVista, Dogpile, Lycos, HotBot and a bunch of others.
Oh how far we’ve come…