The Myth
Ron Tanner, writing professor at Loyola University Maryland, recently wrote an article, “The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Student” for the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s special report on online learning. In this piece he suggests that the media mistakenly portrays today’s young people as tech savvy based on the amount of time they spend using technology rather than their competence using it to do real-world professional tasks.
Background
Perhaps no single text has influenced the basic perspective of the average person more than Marc Prensky’s 2001 book Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. While few have read the book, many have become familiar with the terms within its title. As a result, the general assumption is that today’s youth, as digital natives, are incredibly tech savvy and enter college with considerable know-how.
So What?
Like Tanner, I have found that whether or not students have grown up with technology (whether coming to college immediately or soon after high school or many years later) most enter college having far more experience on the Internet (especially doing things like playing video games, watching videos, and engaging friends via social media) than knowledge of how to use it effectively or efficiently for academic and/or professional endeavors.
- Have you ever assumed someone was tech-savvy simply based on that person’s age?
- What might you learn by engaging in an assessment of the tech knowledge of students in your youth ministry and/or college ministry? How might this impact how you use technology to teach them and how you teach them to use technology?