I was reading an interesting news article today about the frustration a business man has about the lack of ICT skills pupils leaving school have. I can’t say I have found pupils so far advanced in their ICT skills that they learn nothing new in schools. Like adults, pupils vary in their skills in ICT, but generally, I find myself having to give guidance in some straight forward, basic ICT skills that many teenagers don’t seem to have. Computer games, ipods, mobile phones and MSN is where they seem to get their excitement, not blogs, Bebo, podcasts, etc. This is purely anecdotal on my account but wondered if any other teacher has discovered the same thing regarding ‘they’ are the natives and ‘we’ are the immigrants? I no longer buy into that. My ICT skills are very basic, but there are days when I’m astonished at the lack of ICT skills (and interest) in my pupils.
As regards the comment in the article about schools blocking SO many sites, I think we are all in an agreement on that. Last week I was in Yahoo, searching for an image of ‘America’, just to illustrate a stereotypical image of America, and it was filtered! Why? Who knows.
