Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Kids Aren't As Internet Savvy As They Think

One might argue that the title of this post is simply stating the obvious. I agree. Kids aren't as savvy as they think they are at just about anything, so no reason to to think that the kids and the internet would be any different, right? Parents have known for years that kids aren't good at evaluating the claims they hear -- on tv, the internet, on the bus, I could go on  and on. Yet, this truism apparently has been lost on education administrators that have for years told us that our kids are "tech natives" and other such hogwash.

Just because our kids spend an enormous amount of their free time (if we let them) texting on phones or surfing the web, doesn't mean they can critically evaluate what they are consuming.

Now a professor from NEAG (the school of education at UConn) and Pearson, a very profitable company that peddles techie gadgets to the ed world, have teamed up to tell Superintendents that kids lack the skills they need to critically evaluate what they read on the internet -- even older, high school kids aren't good at telling fact from fiction when it is on the internet.

To find out what solution Pearson and Professor Donald Leu (of NEAG) we would have to attend the conference they are putting on in Texas.


For those of you who missed the Texas conference last Monday, let me suggest a few ideas on how to teach kids internet savvy skills -- direct instruction is my favorite method, hands down. Tell and show them the difference between a .com site and an .edu or .gov site. Help them practice by evaluating sites you pick for them to evaluate accuracy and trustworthiness and which are not.  I'd caution against discovery learning approaches.

And if you think your kid is the exception to the rule -- ask them to visit this website:  Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and ask them (with a straight face and as sincerely as you can) if you should donate money to the cause. It is a great site, extremely well done. Click on all the links and marvel at the elaborate efforts put into it.

Actually, if I were feeling really evil, I might try to get my child to share the link with a teacher and see if any of them fall for it too.

6 comments:

  1. You have to be a tech native to post objectionable Facebook comments about your high school principal

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  2. On being internet savvy, our computer was recently infected with some nasty viruses. When our computer guy was cleaning up our mess, he warned us that free game sites are notorious for spreading viruses. My teen loves those free sites, and when I told her this she yelled, "why didn't Mr. X (her technology teacher) ever tell us this??" It got me to wondering the same thing. Frankly, I'm not sure what they're teaching in those classes.

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  3. I agree, Grace. When my oldest took a required tech course in high school, I thought they'd cover all kinds of stuff they needed to know -- like how to run a disk cleanup or defrag the hard drive, how to avoid virus/worms/trojans etc when online, how to keep the computer up-to-date and running efficiently, and stuff like that.

    I was so wrong. The only thing he learned was how to create a short video and upload it to youtube. That was the assignment. sigh.

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  4. to know how to defend yourself against malware, you have envision yourself as the cracker.

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  5. I agree, kids are not tech savvy as they think. They are just lucky they enjoy this technology at an early age!

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