I have to admit the phrase “digital native” annoys me. It conveys on individuals with far less technology experience or understanding than I expect of my colleagues and myself a special status.
It is not the fault of these young people that their proficiencies have been misrepresented. They make no such claims and frequently admit not to know how to handle the online tools we expect them to use. What was Pres. Reagan’s line – “I will not hold your lack of experience against you.” The problem is the misguided perception of those who have popularized this phrase, but who also have encouraged others to believe that growing up after digital technology was widely used provided some special understanding. This representation puts students in a difficult position. Educators would do well to ignore the press releases.
I am thinking this perception of competence was somehow perpetrated to encourage adults who did not happen to be into technology to make the effort to develop their own skills. These skills are important. However, there is nothing in the water or some critical period that anyone over 25 somehow missed that accounts for who knows what.
My latest frustration with the “Facebook generation” and their skill in taking responsibility for the functioning of their devices (BYOD does assume the user knows their own D) involves student use of an online learning environment I developed. The system generates data on student performance and to assure that students are given proper credit for their activity the system tracks their work based on a their login ID. The system has worked just fine for years and this year I started to receive a common complaint. “I have to log in again every time I go on to a new page. Can you fix it?” It seemed to assume the problem was with my software. I tried the system from several of my own computers, from my iPad, from my phone, and from computers in the department lab. Absolutely no problem. I had students with the problem connect from my computer or from a computer in the lab. No problem. I started to think this might be a scam.
After thinking about this problem it occurred to me that this sounded like a problem that involved cookies (the way the server helps your browser keep track of things). I am guessing some browser release (I am just guessing IE) comes with new security defaults involving cookies.
Now, how do you get these technology experts to fix their own equipment? I tried to explain about security settings and cookies. I think the “cookie” thing was throwing them off – perhaps they thought I was suggesting they accept a second dessert at the cafeteria. I finally hit on a different solution. I told them to download any browser that was different from the one they were using and if they were unable to do this on their own to ask someone in one of the computer labs to help. I gave them some suggestions for options. This approach seemed to fix the problem in every case.
I also suggested if they were concerned about security, they only use the new browser they downloaded for the task I assigned. I know they did not set the security on their preferred browser in the first place, but I thought this would keep me out of trouble for recommending dangerous computing practices to digital natives.