Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

The problem isn't that these people can't use computers. It's that they can't THINK. They do not understand what critical thinking is, or how it works. They do not know how to approach problems or explore solutions. They don't know how to do it with their computer... or their car, or their vacuuming robot, or their television, or their oven or their relationships or any thing in their life. They don't understand why the world is the way it is…

The author is correct when he writes, "The truth is, kids can't use general purpose computers, and neither can most of the adults I know" but he goes much further than I think is really necessary or even realistic. I teach at a liberal arts college and in most of my classes I devote a day or two to researching and evaluating sources. I ask them "How can to determine if a web site is credible?" and in every class…

> So since 2000 schools have been teaching students Microsoft skills (Adobe skills were introduced a little later). My most recent required computer class was indeed learning how to use Microsoft Office in high school in 2016. That's it, all the computer education that students required. Even in middle school we were learning how to use office software. Insane that schools STILL just teach office software and not computing thanks to Microsoft's efforts. I was hoping that schools would learn…

I started my teaching career a couple of years after this blog post was written, and finished it three years ago, and I saw all the same things. We've gone from 'kids need to get to grips with computers' to 'computers need to meet users where they are', and UX designers have been more than happy to remove more and more functionality from user interfaces to follow this trend. There's also a general aversion to anything that looks like logic…