understanding

I’ve recently read (at the request of the GTA people) an article called The New Literacy. The main point of the article is that the information environment of today is very different than even just 10 years ago when I was in high school. Thus, the basic skills students need to make their way through this digital world are different: searching, editing/manipulating data, and creating media. These seem to be generally relevant skills, as opposed to, say, calling for everyone to learn to program. Still, this article is basically telling us to teach students how to use computers.

The issue that comes up any time I read this kind of article is: I don’t think I should spend time showing Excel tricks to kids who don’t know how to add fractions. I’m just not convinced that’s the best use of our time. Now, it would be easy to over-simplify the conversation here and approach this as if it were “Back to Basics” versus “New Math”. I’m not playing Traditionalists and Reformers here like it was Cowboys and Indians. A balance of drill and the bigger conceptual picture is needed in modern math education. And likewise, I think that somewhere in a modern school we should acknowledge and deal directly with computers and the Internet. Fine.

The problem is that, in general, we only have a limited amount of time in the school day. Many of my students arrive with extremely low skills in the traditional domains of reading, writing, and arithmetic. How are we to balance the time we spend on those against time we might spend on ‘New Literacy’ skills? Is it meaningful to have students get good at searching for things on Google and determining the trustworthiness of a source if they can’t read half the stuff they find? We don’t yet have laptops for every kid like some schools. So we’re talking about a special trip to the computer lab every time we want do something like this. I need to use my computer lab days for actual math.

Classroom instruction is clunky and chunky by comparison to individual one-on-one teaching. (As discussed over on the lovely blog of Michael Anuzis.) If we were to approach this individually, I can imagine sitting down with a student at a web browser and guiding different kinds of exploration, asking questions or posing assignments along the way, and keeping it all tied into the subject and topic. Or if I had a computer on every desk in my classroom, I would certainly need to address the challenge of how to use them effectively and deeply every day, and I would need to deal with the logistics that the article concerns itself with. Neither of these scenarios is reality.

Yet students already obviously know how to use MySpace. I bet a bunch of them are getting a good intro to JavaScript and HTML as they try to “pimp their profile”. They know how to judge the legitimacy of information in that context. And most teenagers are at least as proficient as — and usually far more so than — their parents when it comes to things like making videos on a computer. I guess I just don’t worry about them showing up to a job someday and going, “My God, what do you do with that computer thing!” Interfaces these days are designed to be usable. It’s getting a job in the first place that’s tough, and that comes down to skills, standardized tests, plus the ability to speak, write, and think. It’s the older generations that tend to face problems (or worry about the issues) when they sit down at a browser, and I’m not always convinced that articles like the one I just read are looking honestly at how much knowledge kids already have — and what they really need.

So as I was reading, questions about who article was intended for kept creeping in. Take this inane passage for instance:

Today, just about all information is expressed in the universal language of numbers. Multimedia content is stored and communicated as ones and zeros, otherwise known as binary code. Since information is expressed in numbers today, and personal computers are available for interpreting and modifying those numbers, it becomes raw material that can be analyzed, altered, and improved in pursuit of a goal.

This has no relevance whatsoever to the issues of what students should be learning. Did they actually write that part about binary code? Universal language of numbers? My God. When I read things like this, I understand why Brian Harvey was annoyed with people talking about computer literacy circa 1983. But is it possible that wonks have gotten dumber since then?

Yes, we need to give kids clear direction about how to do research online, how to cite sources, and how to pull data from the web into a spreadsheet. Yes, we need to help them learn to use whatever medium is available to express themselves. Yes, we need to teach them to analyze what they read and see. So yes, they should be able to use computers. Do we really need the aging, Ph.D-level educational consultants who write things like, "phones have become an interestingly enabling tool" to point this stuff out? I think the more pressing need is for money to go toward actually making computers widely available in the public education setting. Clearly, teachers will figure out what to do with them when they get here, just like the kids figured out how to use MySpace. Now, can we go back to talking about how to teach the adding of fractions? Thanks.