I read Aldon Hynes’s article (Reflections of a Digital Aborigine) that discusses several areas that could effect my high school computer tech class students.
Hyne's explains the (somewhat tired) concept of digital natives and digital immigrants, and considers himself therefore a digital aborigine given that he has been programming since the 60’s. The interesting part was the reference to a case in which some “digital native” high school girls beat a girl who was “trash talking” on MySpace, filmed it, and put it on the Internet. When teacher John Herman discussed the event in his class with his students, they said what the girls did wrong was video tape it and put it on the Internet. That’s what they did wrong? How strange that they beat the girl, and the worst part to these students was the videotaping of it. My (not research supported) feeling is that these digital natives should be re-categorized as naturalized desensitized digital squatters. Some of them assume ownership of these powerful technology with a misguided vision of what technology is, can do, and outght to be used for. I say misguided as they are products of their environments as much as their upbringing (Psychology students: see Nature vs. Nurture).
Maybe They have been so overrun by the pace of the technology that they don’t appreciate the humanity of people that exist behind the 1’s and 0’s.
On another tangent, Hyne references the original “did you know…” video on YouTube. I followed that to the 3rd rendition, located here:
Near the end of the video, it says “By 2013, computers will have the computational ability of the human brain”. That’s wonderful if I just need to add numbers. The power of the computer, though proportionately enormous when compared to decades past, has a long way to go to get to the human brain. Computers can’t even reliably get past the CAPTCHA images used to keep auto registrations on Gmail. An elementary kid can do that. When the computer CAN do that, the image can change to a dog overlayed with distorted numbers/letters. “Type the name of the animal and the letters you see.” Let’s see Mr. Compuer get passed THAT one.
No comments:
Post a Comment