This is a question that was posed by Bill Lammers. He conveys an incident in his high school classroom where the students were working intently on their assignments when . . . suddenly . . . the Internet Died.
Some students squirmed because they didn't think that they would be able to work on their assignment without the Internet. Others squealed in delight when they realized that they didn't have to work on their assignments but moaned in anguish when they decided that they "couldn't do anything else" because their window to the world, The Internet, was down.
Read Lammers' posting at The Pacifier of the Digital Natives
Blammer (Bill Lammers) makes an interesting observation when he notes how tied to the Internet his students were. I was talking with a reporter the other day who told me that some of his interns were literally lost without their GPSs. They had no problem finding places when their smartphones had full access to the web, but they had no idea about how to read a map. They had no idea how to find north and what all of the squiggly lines on the map meant.
Is this a crime or merely a Symbol of the Times? What do you think? Read Lammers' article and then join in the discussion here about being connected to the world through the Internet has changed the skill set for our digital natives.
Join the discussion in the comments section below.
Z
