Learning to use the Internet
I was thinking about how I’ve changed the way that I use the internet over the years and how over time I’ve gotten a lot better at using the net for what I need. Through informal interaction with other technical people and on my own I’ve been exposed to different tools, sites and applications that have made me a lot more productive than I would otherwise be. A few of the many tools I like are Delicious, Google Reader, Firebug, Firefox, and Wikipedia. The point is that it has taken me years to really learn how to be as productive as I am today and a lot of what I’ve learned has been accidental. I think that the evolution of internet has begun to stabilize a bit to the point that some best practices should be emerging in terms of its use but I wonder if school curricula are keeping up? I wonder how kids learn to use the internet? When I was a kid we had classes that taught us how to use a library to find information. It seems like today internet skills are much more important than library skills were when I was a kid. I know that there are classes kids can take on internet research but I have to wonder how relevant they are. I can’t help but think how tough and time consuming it would be to start from scratch and learn how to use the internet. In effect this is what every child has to do. How do they learn internet skills? What’s the best way to teach someone to use the internet? What things do they need to know?
