Absolutely. Many people are lured into believing that apps can do everything a computer can and never acquire crucial computer skills. They go around brandishing their smartphones and tablets and have no idea why, in spite of all the productivity apps, they never seem to catch up. It’s especially sad to see young people get caught up in this self-defeating mentality.
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Clarissa's Blog 
This is absolutely shocking to me. I feel now like a fuddy – duddy. So late 20’s here, and the idea of someone not being good at typing blows my mind (meaning kids younger than me).
Have you seen this anecdotedly or heard directly from students about this at your college? I don’t know the direct line, but i would say anything under 40 words a minute is a massive productivity killler. I think i am probably in the 50-70 word rate, which is much higher than the general population but probably marginally above the professional rate. I think typing say 100 words per minute vs my 50-70 is not that big unless secretary etc. but if you are only typing 20-30 per minute or worse, pecking the key board, then it really will make you hesitatnt to write out or perform certain analyses.
I have seen this in work and family with people 40+ but never with those younger than me, although I don’t engage with the younger crowd that much in professional settings.
Just curious if you see this as a trend. Honestly would be very distressing to me andsomething I really didn’t think was an issue at all (and perhaps it isn’t for college students and just more the blue collar / poverty divide being even more great and wide then recognized)
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“Have you seen this anecdotedly or heard directly from students about this at your college?”
I see it a lot, yes. And it’s not just typing. It’s also working with email that is a dying skill as opposed to texting. Working with a text editor, even Power Point is dying off in favor of some app that claims to substitute it. Many young people don’t know what an external hard drive or a flash drive are because they don’t have the habit of keeping a copy of their files in their own possession. At best, they store information in a cloud and have no idea how to proceed if the cloud is inaccessible. At worst, they just send stuff to themselves as a way of saving it. Which is beyond unreliable.
I take students to work on actual computers as often as I can because otherwise they will lose the skill.
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I see it a lot, yes. And it’s not just typing. It’s also working with email that is a dying skill as opposed to texting. Working with a text editor, even Power Point is dying off in favor of some app that claims to substitute it. Many young people don’t know what an external hard drive or a flash drive are because they don’t have the habit of keeping a copy of their files in their own possession
How can people not know how to use email? I only started really using an email address my freshman year of college, but I learned very quickly. Don’t smartphones require an email address for cloud storage? Doesn’t Windows 8 and up require that you create an account which doubles as your email? I guess I’m old, but I got my particular smartphone because I want to be able to use MicroSD cards and not rely completely on whatever “cloud” for storage. Maybe it’s because I remember actual floppy disks that were floppy?
And how the hell does Mike, of all people, get interns who can barely use a computer? Is he exaggerating?
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“How can people not know how to use email? I only started really using an email address my freshman year of college, but I learned very quickly. Don’t smartphones require an email address for cloud storage?”
And we all assign college email addresses to the students. But getting them actually to look at those emails at least once a week is very hard. Many professors just gave up and moved to texting. I’m still holding out because the idea of sifting through text messages from students is scary.
“And how the hell does Mike, of all people, get interns who can barely use a computer? Is he exaggerating?”
I believe him because I do see it as a thing of the present and the future. I regularly have to teach the differences between .dox, .rtf, .jpg, .pdf, and .png files. And my field is very far away from these issues. But I don’t have a choice because people simply don’t know. Plus, I have to teach graduating seniors how to assign page numbers in a MS Word file or insert symbol or set margins. Just the basic stuff. Anything more complex, I simply don’t have the time for in class.
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A lot of the interns at my company aren’t chosen for technical skill, or at least aren’t vetted much in advance — many of them work in project management, HR, or other roles. 🙂
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There’s a wide gap between “knows how to program” and “can barely turn on a computer”. How the hell do you even function in HR or project management without basic computer literacy? HR is computerized to a large extent. AFAIK, project management also uses computers. 🙂 Do they at least learn quickly?
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In HR they easily survive without knowing how to stand up without toppling over. Those are very useless people.
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“Sod this, I’ll wait ’til I get back to the hotel where I can jam on the laptop at 120+ words per minute …”
This happens nearly every day with my so-called “smart phone”.
Yes, I am aware that there are Bluetooth keyboards, and I own one of the better ones, but the layout isn’t nearly as good as what I have on my laptop …
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The first time I taught graduate students how to run simulations on parallel computing clusters, I was surprised that no one knew what a command line was. Up to that moment, I had assumed that the “kids” were all more conversant with computers than I was.
Last semester I was on a committee charged with drafting guidelines for how to come across as professional in online communication. We definitely had to be explicit regarding how emails to a professor or potential employer are different from texts or tweets, e.g., “No emoticons or internet slang like ‘lol’ or ‘ROTFLMAO'”.
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Using the command line is a legacy of MS-DOS. Resetting TCP/IP autotunning through the command line because Windows 8 sucks doesn’t mean I know anything; it just means I can follow directions.
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I miss MS-DOS. I miss the Norton Commander. That’s how ancient I am.
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