What’s Savvy?
Despite all the talk about ‘digital natives’ and the ‘millennial generation’ it’s been my experience that kids aren’t nearly as connected as adults seem to believe. A post in the Chronicle of Higher Education agrees:
Eszter Hargittai, an assistant professor in Northwestern University’s sociology department, has discovered that students aren’t nearly as Web-savvy as they, or their elders, assume.
Ms. Hargittai studies the technological fluency of college freshmen. She found that they lack a basic understanding of such terms as BCC (blind copy on e-mail), podcasting, and phishing. This spring she will start a national poster-and-video contest to promote Web-related skills.
The question in my mind is who is, or should be, responsible for teaching them the skills that they need? This goes far beyond the questions of ‘digital literacy’ we’re asking what is needed to be a competent, productive citizen and how are the necessary skills to be learned?
