I always find these lists fascinating. Several blogs pointed out that the latest Beloit College Mindset list is out – highlighting things that have always or never been the case during the lifetime of this year’s incoming freshmen.
This made me think of the scene I was told about from the show Wizards of Waverly Place, where Alex knows that “Tom Sawyer” is a song by Rush but doesn’t know it is a book. And it also made me think about this chart Jen McCreight shared about what young people today know about evolution.
There’s a cultural gulf between anyone who is a professor today and incoming students, although it is bigger for some than for others. And however corny some of these lists are, there never fails to be something on them that really surprises me.
But one thing I’ve been emphasizing a lot in recent weeks as I’ve been involved in workshops and summits on teaching and technology is this: today’s students may be “digital natives” but they don’t know how to use the technology they take for granted to find reliable information. And so even if a professor happens to be a “digital immigrant,” we have skills to teach to students. They may use technology to search for information that was once science fiction for us. But sifting through the results to discern what is credible is something that computers cannot do yet, and few students today know that computers don’t rate search results by reliability. And so there’s still something for us to teach them!
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