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    School students have grown up online but test shows digital literacy at new low
    Australia

    School students have grown up online but test shows digital literacy at new low

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    1. thedigisup on

      They’re very familiar with consumer apps and interfaces, but next to nothing data based. I used to be able to assume that most students starting a science degree had used excel before, now we have to spend a class teaching the basics at the start of the semester.

    2. NowtShrinkingViolet on

      It’s not particularly surprising IMO.

      As someone who grew up using older PCs at home and school (ie. Windows 98 / XP), I always wanted to tinker with them. You could mess around with the config files – often requiring an OS reinstall if something went wrong; manage your own files; install new hardware like graphics cards; dual boot multiple operating systems; and so on. Often, these things were necessary if you wanted a game or another application to run properly.

      Now, students have grown up in a world of cloud storage, subscriptions for everything, and locked down devices like Chromebooks and phones. They don’t have the same ability to tinker with the hardware and software, which is sad. And AI is only going to take us further down this road.

    3. LuminanceGayming on

      expecting someone who has only ever used a phone to be good with computers is a bit like expecting someone who drives to work to know how to operate a tractor

    4. JimmyJizzim on

      I’ve noticed this in the workforce a bit. The younger team members+ the older team members often cannot troubleshoot tech issues (e.g. laptops, printers). The in-between, say 30-50yr, who grew up with computers, are much more skilled at this.

    5. Ashdown on

      iPad kids don’t know how tech works any better than boomers in my experience. Completely surface level transactional skills when it comes to interacting with devices.

    6. typical_3ft_grey on

      Walled gardens. You don’t have to troubleshoot or learn anything, their experience of technology is purely consumption

    7. Historical_Laugh2193 on

      This isn’t that surprising. Most people use a phone or a tablet until around grade 10 when they usually get a laptop or similar. It’s also very school dependent.

      Ironically I think AI is going to force a lot of people to understand data in some interesting ways as a lot of the new tooling is around managing data as opposed to consuming it.

    8. Morkai on

      As someone who used to work in user facing IT for John Holland, every year we’d get a cohort of ~200 fresh faced uni grads in different business units, and we’d have to explain that, no, your laptop doesn’t have a touch screen (the X1 Carbon devices did but those were reserved for execs), no we will not be buying you a different laptop with a touch screen, no complaining to your line manager, or their line manager, or the GM will not force us to buy you a device with a touch screen.

    9. war-and-peace on

      The kids i see these days with the most digital literacy are gamers. Not just any gamers but those that have a modding mindset

    10. slayheavysummer on

      My year 8 students struggle so much with computers which is wild. They can absolutely nail any game that requires two arrow keys but formatting a doc or sending an email? No chance.

    11. WolfySpice on

      I grew up with computers and needing to know how they worked. Plus we were taught basic computing skills, word processing, spreadsheets, etc in high school.

      Whoever is in charge of curricula made a fatal assumption: younger people would be ‘digital natives’. What we have now for tech is ‘push button’. Not being taught, and not having to know how anything works, is what contributes to such tech illiteracy.

      I feel doomed to be tech support for everyone older than me and everyone younger than me.

    12. Otaraka on

      ‘He also said AI had likely made some of the things that were assessed “redundant”.’

      This is the problem with measuring skills in this area.  It’s a bit like assessing how many people can fix a car engine these days – It’s just not going to be a major focus for many people any more even if in in theory it would have some benefit.

    13. alkalineHydroxide on

      Yeah there are university students who don’t know how to use ctrl c ctrl v, or don’t know how to unzip files, or seemingly simple tasks like that