A love for avocado lattes and Snapchat filters are only a couple
of the stereotypes following Millennials nowadays. But students are now pushing
back on these generational speculations, noting that these assumptions about
their attitudes, interests, and capacities are harming them academically. One
of the greatest misconceptions students at previous week's New Media
Consortium's Summer Conference (NMC) raised was the idea that millennials are
digital natives.
Many people must have heard this scenario earlier: The
eight-year-old child showing his forty-year-old father how to use some new
gadget or app. In spite of being a metaphor of our times, a ton has been said
off record in regards to misconceptions regarding students' technological
capacities. In a meeting, Alexandra Pickett, the Director of New York State
University's Center for Online Teaching Excellence, noticed that a number of
her students know how to use online platforms, like Twitter and Facebook for entertainment
purposes only, and have no clue how to use them for academic and professional
use. It's time students echoed.
"Something you can do to prep your students for college
is to set one day where you have a workshop about utilizing Google Docs to its
best," recommended Alejandra Cervantes, a junior at UCLA, in response to a
question about the best way to support high school students making their way to
college. "Something straightforward like that can be quite instrumental in
helping them succeed in classes later on."
Raamish Saeed, a senior from Saint Louis University, told the
group, "We are not exceptionally tech savvy coming into college. Other
than playing games and using basic Microsoft office, there are numerous things
we don't have a clue about."
"I didn't know how to use headers, footers or page
number in Microsoft Word, so I got five points off each assignment for a whole
semester," clarified Alyssa Foley, a student at Houston Community College,
in the meeting. "I didn't have Microsoft Word at home since I did not want
to pay for it. I had some free office program, so even if I tried attempting
it, all the formatting would go haywire."
Foley is a first generation student, and her family is viewed
as low-income. She eventually figured out how to use Word and PowerPoint
through her sister's friend, and when inquired as to why she didn't reach out
for assistance from the school, she said she was deeply embarrassed about not
being able to satisfy "tech-native" criteria.
A 2015 report led by the Pew Research Center shows students
like Foley and Saeed are not the only one. The report found that in around five
million homes (17.5%) with school-age children did not have access to the
Internet. Out of those with access, many homes did not have laptops or PCs as
students usually used cell phones for Internet associations. For classrooms
that expect students to team up online and write long articles, not having
these resources puts them at an academic disadvantage.
Students say that in order to better learn from high schools
and universities, it is important to challenge the assumption that students are
digital natives. This begins with instructing teachers about the technological
diversity in their classrooms and providing students with workshops and
interesting videos to enable them to learn without shame. Foley recommends
schools offer free access to common software programs, noting that software
costs are high and numerous students don't have the funds to procure them.
"Simply having the access to programs like Adobe Suite
would help us to be able to take in the innovation," says Foley.
"Those are programs I will use in my field, so I have to know it."
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