COLUMN: Professors need CIL classes
For an Internet and folklore class this semester, I read an article by Marc Prensky called “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” written in 2001. This article discussed the disparity between teaching and learning styles of teachers versus college and high school students, claiming that teachers now use an outdated mode of information exchange that proves to be ineffective for more modern generations.
The first generations of youth constantly exposed to an overwhelming amount of media, particularly concerning computers and the Internet, are attending high schools and colleges with teachers who are often unfamiliar with the increasing amounts of modern technology. Not having been raised in an environment where knowing how to download computer programs, format cell phone settings and build PowerPoint presentations are an everyday part of life, these adults often have a difficult time learning and implementing updated technology.
Older generations were taught differently, using books as primary sources of information, and these adults teach the same way they learned — which is not the same way current young adults learn. College and high school students today are used to accessing information quickly, easily and efficiently through multiple resources foreign to their predecessors.
This causes several problems in erudite pedagogy, and one major problem is there are teachers who don’t know how to use technology proficiently enough to teach students. Every college student has had to sit in class and wait for their teacher to do seemingly primordial tasks, including pulling up a YouTube video, or finding a website for an author the class is reading. Students get bored, teachers get frustrated and time is wasted.
Ironically, until I started college a few years ago, USU required all students to take and pass Computer and Information Literacy classes and exams. Many colleges and almost all high schools still require CIL classes.
I vividly remember sitting in front of a worn desk while my witch of a high school CIL teacher slowly clicked through slides, illustrating how to change font sizes, margins and paragraph spacing in Microsoft Word.
The students lucky enough to have their computers facing away from her played games and accessed Facebook. The rest of us swiveled aimlessly in our chairs, texted or wrote notes to boyfriends. Not a single student paid attention, because we already knew how to operate the program, and if we didn’t know how, we would look it up on YouTube and find out how to do it in a matter of seconds.
I remember several conversations with friends musing over the fact that we knew more about computers than our teachers did, and none of us were remarkably computer savvy. The fact is, plastic laptops are a popular toy for today’s toddlers. Almost from infancy, today’s teenagers are exposed incessantly to technology. They’ve learned to rapidly learn and assess information via modern resources.
The group who needs to be taking computer literacy classes is the teachers who did not grow up surrounded by smartphones and file sharing. While there are certainly middle-aged adult professionals in technological fields, the majority of the teachers I’ve had throughout my lifetime have been computer illiterate when compared to their students.
According to the “Journal of Teacher Education,” the Minnesota Education Computer Consortium found that only 39 percent of 3,800 teachers surveyed agreed that their own teacher training only adequately prepared them to use computers while instructing their classes — and these were teachers who taught computer literacy content.
If the teachers are rating themselves as ill-prepared when dealing with modern technological advances, there is clearly a significant problem. The solution, however, doesn’t seem too difficult and, quite honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t been done yet.
Having high school and college teachers attend a computer literacy class and pass a test before they are certified to teach students would be relatively easy to coordinate. Simply taking a class once isn’t going to cut it.
Accountants are required to continually update themselves on tax law because it is always changing. Teachers should do the same with technology. Every two to three years, educational institutions need to make sure their instructors are aware of, and able to use, advances in technology to be on par with their students.
Doing so would eliminate much-wasted time in and out of the classroom as teachers begin to utilize online resources for their students’ benefit. I personally vote we send them all back to high school to take CIL classes from our old teachers.