I put this very question about digital fluency to this teacher today. She forcefully scoffed at the notion that kids are not fluent. Her response echoed my own general feeling that the recent meme about students not knowing how to use file systems is absolute malarkey. They can and do manage files if they want to. Some do. Some don’t. It’s not so much an age thing as it is an aspect of personality. Some organize, some search, many do a mix of both. I get that and tend to agree with it. It reflects what I’ve seen adults do.
I guess it depends too on how we are defining digital literacy/fluency.
Editing to add: We didn’t just talk about files, file organization, recognizing that files exist and are stored on a computer but that was one point discussed.
John Gruber discussed the iPad this week brought up the fact that we do a great deal of work in a browser these days and iPad Safari isn’t up to the job:
“a friend of mine, Tom Conrad, longtime tech person, executive, he was at Apple way back in the day, brought up the notion also in the context of using the iPad Pro as a power user. What if they just made Safari work like it does on Mac OS? Is that enough for most people?
Because so many of us now use the web browser for so many of our daily routines work and otherwise you and I right now are recording through a web browser this podcast. What if Apple just let Safari run as it does on Mac OS? Neely had a just he’s getting so succinct on social media. I think it was like three words, but he had a quip on threads the other day where it’s the browser. It’s Safari.
And I do think that’s a huge factor. I think putting aside the Mac OS on iPad, the scaling up the iPhone version of WebKit to these tablet size computers is definitely a problem. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t run into problems all the time. . . .
And Joanna Stern . . . often uses the request desktop version. . . .And I tried that all the time too. It works, like, maybe less than 50% of the time.”
Some of the newer generation will need to learn the “old way of doing things” But today a browser is all some workers need. And I don’t think anyone knows how workflows are going to change in the next few years because of AI.
I was using digital fluency in the way the linked article did, as something beyond digital literacy. I don’t know anything about the person you talked to, obviously, but while there are certainly many exceptions, I doubt the average schoolteacher is very digitally fluent.
It will be interesting to see whether some of the other browser devs will be able to get around that in the EU, where they won’t be restricted to WebKit anymore.
Yeah, so many interesting questions! I’m increasingly curious about tech in education. At all grade levels as well as the roles it plays in various levels. Also, how is it used in different subject areas? How is it used for management?
I suppose I could go on a search of tech education podcasts.
Realizing, getting off the original topic of this thread - apologies!
Digital fluency is far less of a problem for kids and youth than it is for every adult I know outside of tech. And that’s a lot of people who can barely operate a computer.
I’ll be honest, though…I don’t think it will be hard for a touch-first kiddo who grows up to use whatever version of Windows or macOS is kicking around by then. They are smart and will adapt. On top of that, I’d argue the vast majority of people use pretty basic functions on their work computers or use something so specialized they’ll learn it/get trained on it anyway.
I completely agree with the point that Safari is a large part of the problem. Or, put another way, websites that don’t play nice with Safari are a subset of that problem. Which is one of the reasons I wish they would open to up to other browsers using other rendering engines instead of forcing everyone into Webkit. Because I’ll be honest, even macOS Safari stumbles because people aren’t using best web coding practices.
I really don’t believe that Apple’s goal is designed to force people to buy two machines. Apple certainly wants to create synergies between the two devices; so, people can use them well together. I think Apple is iterating slowly but purposefully. This could be wrong, I may be naïve, and Apple could be trying to maximize the number of people who buy both. I just don’t think so. Apple seems to be telling people if you need A, B, and C, then the Mac is for you. If you need X, Y, and Z, then iPad would be a great choice. If you need both, get both. Some people do.
I think the issue comes down to this. Those of us who have been using computers since DOS, have been trained to think in term of file systems first. Computers were for processing records. Records were contained in files. We all lived in the directory tree. Today, people have an actual choice. They can manage their data through carefully curated folder trees or they can just leave (as my wife does) all their files on their desktops, download folders, and e-mail attachments. My wife never has an issue finding a file she needs.
Old schoolers often have trouble accepting that people can be digitally fluent and not care about the file system. At some point, it will behoove them to understand it. But they can navigate technology as well as we could, without being file system gurus.
They never had to have Norton Commander. They never had to defrag a hard drive. They are so lucky.
Edit (solely for nostalgia purposes):
I used to have to watch my 40 MB hard drive go through something like this circa 1991:
This is really insightful. If we aren’t careful, we can fall into the trap of telling younger users that unless they did things the way we did, they aren’t “real” users or they aren’t fluent. Also, when a lot of the Apple enthusiast blogs/podcasters are (or work closely with) developers, they think that knowing the ins and outs of the file system and how all the software ties together is fluency. But reality is far from that.
Your example of using search is a good one. I’ve seen the trend over the years, for instance, of people filing all their emails in Outlook in a complex tree of folders. Others have started to migrate to no folders (or just a few) and rely on search. Same for file searching, especially thanks to OCR.
So I think it behooves folks to not fall into the trap of “if they don’t use a computer my way, they aren’t fluent.” (This is not a dig on anyone here, btw)
Back when our company had an on site email server which had a default limit of 256 folders, I had one user who requested more. And a couple of times spent nearly an entire day looking for one message.
Even if you don’t think Apple’s primary goal is to maximize revenue, it seems clear that Apple sees the iPad and the Mac as separate, complementary product categories. I don’t think Apple wants to turn the iPad into an alternative to a Mac. It would muddy their positioning and branding of both product categories.
Some iPad users see things a Mac does or does better and wish they could do them. They think the obvious solution is for Apple to make the iPad more Mac-like. Apple thinks the obvious solution is for them to use a Mac for those things, because that’s what it’s designed to do.
True, but they’ll almost always make more revenue if you buy a Mac and an iPad than if you just buy an iPad. When they’re developing new versions of iPadOS, why would they want to create incentives for you to skip buying the Mac?
Indeed. Far be it from me to argue against such sound an argument. My only narrow point — which, admittedly may fail in the face of yours — is that I don’t think Apple is intentionally crippling iPadOS for the purpose of selling people both iPad + Mac.
But today a browser is all some workers need. And I don’t think anyone knows how workflows are going to change in the next few years because of AI.
