Incoming College Freshmen "Tech Illiterate"

Quote:

As with many college students, Jose Juarez carries a pocket-sized computer that lets him watch movies, surf the Internet and text-message his friends.

He's part of "Generation M" -- kids born after 1985 who grew up connected to the media, from video games to cell phones.

"For us, it's everyday life," said Juarez, an 18-year-old freshman at California State University, Sacramento.

However, not all of Generation M can synthesize the loads of information they're accessing, educators say.

"They're geeky, but they don't know what to do with their geekdom," said Barbara O'Connor, a Sacramento State communications studies professor involved in a nationwide effort to hone students' computer-research skills.

On a recent nationwide test to measure their technological "literacy" -- their ability to use the Internet to complete class assignments -- only 49 percent of the test-takers correctly evaluated a set of Web sites for objectivity, authority and timeliness. Only 35 percent could correctly narrow an overly broad Internet search.

About 130 Sacramento State students, including Juarez, participated in the experimental test, administered to 6,300 college and students across the country.

The hour-long assessment test, by Educational Testing Service -- the same company that gives the SAT -- is a Web-based scavenger hunt with simulated Internet search engines and academic databases that spit out purposely misleading information.

"They're very good at typing in and using the Internet, but they don't always understand what they get back," said Linda Goff, head of instructional services for the CSUS library.

"You see an open search box, you type in a few words and you push the button," said Goff, who is involved in the testing.

"They take at face value whatever shows up at the top of the list as the best stuff."

How about that?
The youth of the nation are struggling with finding proper information on the internet, even though they're constantly using it?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I can understand that totally.
Although I try not to do this, and even remind myself not to, about 99% of our program just types in the terms on Google and goes from the top to the bottom whenever it's report time. As for myself, I can tell when a source wouldn't be the best one to use or cite in a report. It's apparent that others don't know though, since our marketing professor actually made it a point to put on display the mistakes of students in past years and dedicate 15 minutes of a lecture to that.

As for searching within databases, we've had one presentation per term in class time, dedicated to showing us how to search for databases. It's not all that difficult or different compared to searching search engines Google, but you have to put a little more detail since you'll get a ton of results. It's also more boring and less convenient than Google, so we all lose free marks because of laziness.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

It's sadly true... my school has many classes spend at least one day in the library learning how to find reliable info on the internet. They discourage us from sites like Wikipedia, where anyone can edit information, and showed us how to tell when a site is unreliable. For instance, a psychology site that looked 100% reliable was on the list, and no one could find anything to say otherwise. Then the professor had us click for the bio of the guy who ran the site, and it brought us to a page describing him and his religion, which involved aliens and the destruction of Earth.

It certainly left us skeptical about his webpage...

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by TemariPC31

Then the professor had us click for the bio of the guy who ran the site, and it brought us to a page describing him and his religion, which involved aliens and the destruction of Earth.

URL??

Most amazing jew boots

Lol, if you're asking for the URL of the webpage we were looking at, gods know I dont still have it. This was from a class I took... ohhhh... 2 or 3 semesters ago. Maybe even 4. I can check my old notebooks and see if I can find it, but it may take a while. Lol. Trust me, it was probably the most entertaining thing about that class.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I don't think all of "Generation M" is "tech illiterate" though. Sure they may not be able to understand, analyze and debunk info they find on the Web (which, for all intents and purposes is littered with falsehoods and photoshops), but they are able to utilize to a greater degree the technology that they were born in to -- mp3 players, cell phone (with cameras, etc.), evne handheld gaming devices.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

That's not really shocking news. Why don't they publish a report that middle aged professors have difficulty using the internet as well? I can recall countless times when my professors had difficulty with the internet (one who repeatedly clicked the same link thinking that it would load faster but instead made it reload from the beginning... this happened for at least five clicks).

As for finding information on the internet, I don't see why they are criticizing "generation M" like it is our fault that loads of information you search for that comes up on google or other well known search engines come up as crap. Other generations will have the same problem as well. It is the same as finding books in the library - a lot of it is crap too, and not all pages are copiable. To have a truly fair test, they should test people a generation above us and see if the results are the same. If older generations test better than us, then I would more likely believe their study.

FELIPE NO

You mention scholarly journals, but the thing about those is that access to them is practically exclusive to college students whose colleges pay for the access to engines like Lexis Nexis. That's not always the case, but it's certainly more often than not.

Back in high school, they never taught us about Lexis Nexis nor had the tools to access them. Of course, this was back when citing physical encyclopedias was still easier than looking things up on the Web.

How ya doing, buddy?

A computer literacy test is necessary for graduation at my school. I passed it in advance during my first semester of college, but many of my other classmates weren't able to complete it on the first try.

One of the questions involved visiting a site that talked about "dihydrogen monoxide," and students had to evaluate it. I remember hearing how that specific task caused many of them to fail the exam since they weren't able to see through the site.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The computer literacy test at my school focused on good surfing habits to prevent the spread of malware, identity theft, etc. You had to pass this test before you were even allowed to connect your computer to the school network.

Like Devo said, being unable to evaluate an online source for the purposes of research isn't really being tech illiterate, its not understanding how to do research properly. Every student at my school was required to take an English course focused entirely on how to properly research a topic, including how to evaluate any source. The emphasis was to not take the information simply at face value. Who is the author of the information? What are his/her credentials? Where is the information published? Is it published in affiliation with a university, government institution, or non-profit organization? Do any other sources refer to this information? How old is the information?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So, I'm not part of generation M or X, apparently. Because Gen Xers are now in their, what, 30s? And then cut-off date for Generation M is after 1985, where does that leave all of us born between 81~84?

I apparently have a leg up on Generation M, because I can tell the difference between genuine research articles and someone's editorial. I'm also a part time stripper AND I do hair.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

If your school lets you use google or wikipedia as a scholarly source, switch universities. Real sources come from scientific databases like LexisNexis, Engineering Village, Addison, etc.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

That isn’t too surprising. However, I don’t think it’s fair to suddenly expect students to be able to critically appraise information unless you’ve had to do it as part of your curriculum previously. If all your assignments have only been focused on finding and regurgitation of fact and copy and paste jobs have got you through it (this seems to be common in highschool nowadays), then of course you’re not going to have great research skills. I remember when I first started we had tutorials about searching through databases and being able to find relevant journal articles, followed by sessions on how to evaluate the statistics and wording of published medical articles.

It shouldn’t just be limited to online “technology” either, although the problem is probably more apparent now because of it. I don’t know if any of you are young enough to remember a time when the internet wasn’t the primary research tool, but the same thing applies to being able to appraise sources like books and (the often sensationalist) print media too. Still, you were less likely to get such a wild variety of opinions in books.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by ElectricSheep

Like Devo said, being unable to evaluate an online source for the purposes of research isn't really being tech illiterate, its not understanding how to do research properly. Every student at my school was required to take an English course focused entirely on how to properly research a topic, including how to evaluate any source. The emphasis was to not take the information simply at face value. Who is the author of the information? What are his/her credentials? Where is the information published? Is it published in affiliation with a university, government institution, or non-profit organization? Do any other sources refer to this information? How old is the information?

No I know, the title "Tech Illiterate" is a little misleading, but that's what the article was titled as well.
I suppose "Information Illiterate" would be a more fitting denomination of these students. After all, even with all of the technology in the world: if they keep dumbing it down and making it easier to use, it will create a stupid society filled with people who want things "to just work".

But that's another argument entirely. However, I think that this article is evidence that today's technology is dumbing us down. Call it information overload if you want, or over-saturation of the senses. Either way, cases like this will probably start becoming the norm, unless something is done to counteract it.

Also, ElectricSheep, those questions you ask at the end are typical research questions drilled into most college students' heads in any "research intensive" class. I remember taking a short summer History course and the professor bringing up those points on the first day because the course required research papers. Most professors shun Wikipedia unless it cites a true source and you use that source instead.
Most of my professors respond to sites like Wikipedia in the same way: "It's like a study assistant, but not a real source of any information. Take what you read from that website with a LARGE grain of salt."

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Devoxycontin

This assumption only works if you can't realize that there were just as many dumb kids in the past. There was printed media that is just as bogus as the online websites we peruse today. There were dumb kids who couldn't validate sources. There were plenty of morons who bought earlier work off a previous class, or paid some nerd to do their work for them. I get tired of this assumption that the internet is encouraging laziness and stupidity. The laziness or stupidity for many students was already inbred, being online really has nothing to do with it.

Ease of access.
Not everyone could get that dumbed down printed media. First, they had to find it by searching for it.
These days it's as easy as a push of a button (or ten).

FELIPE NO

As Matt said, ease of access is a major factor in this issue. People are too lazy to critically analyze these sources and just go to the top few Google pages. You could possibly just as easily obtain credible information, its just that it is accomapnied by a flood of shit.

But there are databases available to non-university students that are usually attached to public library systems. They contain credible information.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I really don't understand this whole distrust of Wikipedia. I mean, could one really go and edit the information so that it says some crazy thing like Genghis Khan flew to the moon in 1783 on a magical dragon named Gertrude? How long would something like that stay on? Don't they have people like... running that site? Honestly I've never found one thing on Wikipedia to be untrue, and I always cross-reference what i read there.

And what actually constitutes "credibility"? We're all human. Britannica was written by humans, Encarta was written by humans. Thomas Fucking Jefferson is a primary source and he swore he never got down with Sally Hemmings... but what do you think?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by taiga

I really don't understand this whole distrust of Wikipedia. I mean, could one really go and edit the information so that it says some crazy thing like Genghis Khan flew to the moon in 1783 on a magical dragon named Gertrude? How long would something like that stay on? Don't they have people like... running that site? Honestly I've never found one thing on Wikipedia to be untrue, and I always cross-reference what i read there.

And what actually constitutes "credibility"? We're all human. Britannica was written by humans, Encarta was written by humans. Thomas Fucking Jefferson is a primary source and he swore he never got down with Sally Hemmings... but what do you think?

The thing with Wikipedia is that anyone can change info if they want. For example, one time I looked up "Dinosaur" on wiki, and instead of getting a page that discussed the large creatures that existed millions of years ago, I got a page where someone essentially said "There's no such thing as dinosaurs, God created the world 6,000 years ago, and that's the truth!"

Intrigued by this, I followed the page history for a few minutes. Like every 5 minutes or so, it kept reverting back to a page showing dinosaurs as we know them according to research done on them, and the page where a Bible nut was trying to delete all that info.

Finally, it got a "page can't be edited by new/unregistered users", because of that "back and forth war" (and it's still there if you look up dinosaur). I once got a similar situation when looking up "woman" where instead of a page showing what a woman is, I got a paragraph where someone said women were the devil (I guess he got dumped or rejected, and took it way too personally).

I like wikipedia for just looking up general information, but I usually take it with a grain of salt because a lot of the stuff written there can't be verified (meaning they don't cite their sources, so that someone who wants to check up on the information can't find out where they got that info from, which is a big no-no in academic studies/research. If you don't cite sources, how do they know you didn't pull those facts/information out of your ass?). Of course, this is slowly being corrected (notice a lot of pages will now have "Citation needed", meaning if something is said on a wiki page, then you need to back it up with where you got that information from), so I think a few more years and wiki will be reliable. But for now it could be misleading, and could give people the wrong ideas about stuff.

I suppose I used extreme and maybe silly examples, but you get the general idea. If someone who isn't trained on the subject starts to add their own info in it, what if they're wrong? Sure, they might've had good intentions, but what you believe is right may not always be what's the correct thing (particularly when it comes to history).

Regarding Thomas Jefferson, while he claimed he never did it, there are many people who will often try to hide their um, bad side, or at least try to minimize it. To use another example, lets look at Strom Thurmond. Here was a guy who fought in World War 2, and was a US Senator for a long period of time. During his time in office, he's been known to have racist attitudes (such as filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957, although he seems to have abandoned those views later in life). And no doubt a long time from now, people will remember him for those things, having fought in WW2 and then was a Senator for a long period of time.

However, something that was largely kept secret (and only revealed after he died) was the fact that he had fathered a child with a black woman. The woman said she only did this after he died out of respect for him, and wasn't doing it for money or fame (but no doubt to make sure that history remembers this was another thing he did). When you read history books later on, will they include this information in, or will they omit it, deeming it not important? And in the case of wikipedia, there may be some people who wouldn't want this information out, so would delete all references to this, to make it as if he never had this child (again, consider his racist stance early on, and then having an affair with a black woman).

Again, you have to take this stuff with a grain of salt, unless they include citations and sources so you (or anyone else) can find out where they got that information from. I have nothing against offering differing points of view, but a lot of times people will let their biases get the better of them when they write down stuff in wikpedia. The Crusades, for example, will seem to a Christian, as their duty to go and free the Holy Land from infidels who were defiling the place where Christ once lived. However, Muslims (and to a lesser extent, Jews) will see this "crusading army" as a threat, one that they have to fight against and kick out (particularly considering how brutal the 1st Crusade was once they got into Jerusalem). While you could get a neutral point of view, if a strongly biased Christian edits the info, you can bet the Muslims will seem like monsters. Conversely, if a strongly biased Muslim edits it, they will make it seem like they were victims of Christian aggression, and that it was their religious duty to drive these forces out. Marxists also painted another image, showing the Christians as only going there for financial reasons (mostly to find plunder/land, and no doubt some did, but recent research shows that many did it for religious reasons only, and many rich nobles sold lands and went broke financing themselves and other people to go on Crusades). But boy does the Marxist approach paint a good, if inaccurate picture of it.

It's because of stuff like this why you should be careful when looking up information (particularly online). Yes, we're only human, but if you do your research properly, then you won't look like a fool when you present stuff (again, this is mostly just academic stuff, but even in like the Political Palace, if you don't know what you're talking about, you'll often get flamed, and rightfully so).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

By tech-illiterate, they're referring to the stupid people who see these things as nothing more than ways to watch youtube videos while gossiping on myspace?

I HATE the label put on "us" as that type. I hate both of those sites with a passion. Oh, and I don't use Wikipedia as a source of information.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I think it comes down to people being need to be TAUGHT how to properly do searches. Just because a generation is more familiar with technology doesn't mean they'll automatically be awesome at every aspect of it. If they're expected to do better then they need to be TAUGHT better on how to use it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Generation M? That's a new one, haha.. born after 1985? Man, I KNEW there was always a huge gap between those born after 1985 and those before.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Gecko3

I like wikipedia for just looking up general information, but I usually take it with a grain of salt because a lot of the stuff written there can't be verified (meaning they don't cite their sources, so that someone who wants to check up on the information can't find out where they got that info from, which is a big no-no in academic studies/research. If you don't cite sources, how do they know you didn't pull those facts/information out of your ass?). Of course, this is slowly being corrected (notice a lot of pages will now have "Citation needed", meaning if something is said on a wiki page, then you need to back it up with where you got that information from), so I think a few more years and wiki will be reliable. But for now it could be misleading, and could give people the wrong ideas about stuff.

I just think that everything should be taken with a grain of salt, not just wikipedia. Because in all reality, how can you ever tell the difference between actual facts and bullshit? Anybody can cite a source, but where did that source get their information? It could go on continuously and at some point down the line how would you know someone's ass wasn't involved? But I admit defeat merely because wikipedia actually allows that editing insanity to go on. That in itself does reduce their credibility.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?