My Kids A Whiz At Computers
I was reading Matt Jones blog this morning and he posts an article from peterme.com which is actually from Don Norman.
Anyways…here’s the link -
matt jones | Don Norman on Eloi Vs Morlocks
And from Don Norman -
“Kids don’t have a clue about how things work. Sure, kids can whiz through a lot of menus and commands, etc. But I understand what is happening underneath — they are clueless. This bothers me.
Society seems to think that because kids have memorized the actions required to get something working that they understand it. “My kid is a whiz at technology,” they brag. This scares me. This is why China will become the dominant nation and the US will fall behind. We don’t understand that true knowledge is more than learning how to push the buttons. In fact, those with true knowledge are not necessarily adept at using the stuff. Let’s not confuse one with the other.”
This resonated with me. I notice it in a range of kids I interact with; they are interested in the systems and what they can do with them but there is almost no appreciation for what is making it work. Increasingly ’stable’ operating systems are also contributing to this. My experience in Dos, early windows versions and the Mac at least forced me to understand how the system fundamentally worked. My high school and first year computer courses all looked at why and how the systems worked, now I notice my sisters courses (ten years younger) focus on how to use the program features, particularly in the high school courses.
How do you teach the underpinnings of increasingly complex and clumsy systems with overreaching UI’s if you don’t want to do a computer science degree?