Tech-literacy of students - recent study
Study shows students are tech-savvy – to a degree
[ UniNews Vol. 15, No. 21 13 - 27 November 2006 ]
Blogging is just part of life for many first-year students at the University of Melbourne. A 2006 study of first-year students at Melbourne reveals that around one-third of commencing students maintain a blog and more than one-half read and comment on other people’s blogs.
Almost 2000 first-year students were surveyed in the study, released this week, which looked at their experience with a wide array of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and tools during the previous 12 months.
The First Year Students’ Experiences with Technology: Are They really Digital Natives? study was carried out by Dr Gregor Kennedy, Dr Terry Judd, Ms Anna Churchward and Dr Kathleen Gray of the Biomedical Multimedia Unit, and Dr Kerri-Lee Krause of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education.
Dr Kennedy says the study showed that many first-year students’ are highly tech-savvy and regularly use a wide range of traditional and emerging technologies in their daily lives.
“But we found little support for the stereotypical image of the ‘Digital Native’ – wired and wireless 24/7.
Full report is online at: www.bmu.unimelb.edu.au/research/munatives/index.html
posted by Susannah @ 8:52 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I think that is right. Generation Y and the upcoming Generation Z are tech savvy. But that is true of any generation, and it is also its limitation. tech savvy for their own time only - how tech savvy are you with regard to building a pyramid or a sundial? Could you create or use the tools of a medieval stone mason? The issue for us as librarians is whether we can convey the importance of critical thinking and credible sources of information being used (and acknowledged via referencing)while contextualizing it to the new high tech realities. I am old enough to remember when index cards were high tech, and the coolest kid was the one that had a transistor radio. Now we have podcasting, and MP4 is coming with streaming video. I too maintain 2 blogs, a web site, have RSS feeds into various readers to stay up to date with information, and consider myself reasonably tech savvy in my profession. Yet I often feel like a dinosaur trying to puzzle out a spacecraft. I think context is very important. Peel away the high tech veneer and what you still have is index cards, books, newspapers, radio juiced up by the technology, speeded up, made more flexible and accessible. The logic is still the same - how it is delivered has changed. What did they say, is it credible, what is the evidence, can I use it? I will be really worried when we can have direct telepathic communication - imagine being told inside your head what information you need.
Post a Comment
<< Home