Some adults are intimidated by the the technological knowledge of today’s youth, but it appears that kids today are not as good with technology as they appear.
The study found that, contrary to stereotype, teens as a group are not as adept as adults in navigating the Web.
When dealing with students and technology, one obstacle is the wide range of skills. This gap is getting wider with the advancements of technology, and will be something we’ll have to deal with.
I find this is true. I work with high school students and many of them do not know how to do a search. They also have difficulty determining the validity and accuracy of websites.
Watching students do research for class assignments, they search the Internet with the Google browser EVEN when their teacher has directed them to specific web sites. When students are asked on which web site they found their information they quickly reply “Google” & that indicates that they not only need to learn the difference between a web browser and a web site, they also need to learn how to evaluate a web site and understand who wrote it and where the information came from.
Students are very quick to believe that everything they find on the Internet is true. Research on the accuracy of the Internet indicates that as much as 60% of the web is NOT accurate and over 90% of the available web sites are commercial, personal, strongly biased & political, or other web sites that are not appropriate for education. Students need to know how to tell the “good” sites from the “bad” sites……INFOhio has several resources that are designed & provided for student/teacher use. If students learn to use the variety of INFOhio resources, they will have experience with the “good” web sites and have something to compare other sites to.
If anyone is interested, we have several flyers on INFOhio & web site evaluations that a few teachers are using with their students. Students need to cite all of their sources – both print and nonprint. In fact, research about student academic achievement prove that students who use both print & nonprint Internet resources are doing better academically than the students who use only nonprint Internet resources because they don’t take the time to filter out the inaccurate information. Teachers can check to see if students have plagiarised text from the Internet by going to Yahoo! search engine and typing in the phrase in quotation marks…….this will search the web and locate where the passage came from. I have tried this & it really works. There are also commercial programs that do the same thing….Turn It On! is one that you might have heard of.
We have 2 excellent books about student use of the Internet that are both filled with research data that might surprise teachers, parents, and students. STUDENT CHEATING & PLAGIARISM IN THE INTERNET ERA: A WAKE-UP CALL by Ann Lathrop and Kathleen Foss is a must read for anyone who works with teeangers. And, NET CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS: OUTMANEUVERING THE SPAMMERS, SWINDLERS, AND STALKERS WHO ARE TARGETING YOU ONLINE by J.A. Hitchcock is another book that explains the dangers of the Internet for both teenagers and adults.
There have been several studies published that indicate that students can’t navigate the Web as well as we think….lifelong learning helps keep pace with the Web that changes with every day.