Article 7 - Unit 7

Hawkins, Brian L., Diana G. Oblinger. (2006). The Myth about Student Competency. EDUCAUSE Review, March/April.

Summary:
The authors of this article ask if students from our younger generation, made up of people ages 18-22, are actually IT literate, or just fairly competent. While students entering universities are more and more competent with popular software, such as computer games, instant messaging tools, and MS Word, the authors show that students do not know nearly as much when it comes to other programs, such as spread sheet programs such as Excel, and web page languages, such as HTML. Oblinger and Hawkins frame the above question and examples with education, and then explain the issues that tying IT literacy and education come across. To conclude their article, the authors list five questions that both students and university personnel should investigate when trying to advance individual and overall student IT literacy.

Response:
I had never really thought of the differences between being IT literate and having what most young people would call “basic” IT skills, or IT competency. I found the statistics listed in the article to match my understanding of student competency, as most people I know are fairly competent when it comes to things like text messaging, instant messaging, and using word processing software, though many have no clue how to make a spreadsheet or create a web page (even when using software designed for it). The questions that the authors posed at the end of their article also made me think, especially when they asked what universities should teach when it comes to information technology, as skills are useful, but the ethics and sub-skills needed to really succeed when using technology such as the internet are just as useful. I believe, however, that these concepts should be targeted in high school or middle school students, as they seem to be more apt for not being able to understand bias over the Internet, as well as plagiarize from web sources.