From AP
There's an interesting article making the AP rounds this week regarding the "wiredness" rate (is that a word?) of blacks and Hispanics versus whites. The poll from Pew shows that blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to use their mobile phones to access the Internet, update Facebook accounts and checking e-mail.
People quoted in the article raise concerns about how minorities use their connectedness. To summarize, those mentioned were concerned that minorities were using their Internet access to entertain themselves and not do something productive, like apply for jobs, work on spreadsheets, etc.
Speaking from personal experience, as a former Computer Applications I teacher, I'm not sure that this problem is limited to just minorities. I started teaching under the assumption that all of these teenagers that grew up with computers would be able to run circles around me. I found that assumption to be 180 degrees off. It seems like most of my students know just enough about computers to download music, play games and send misspelled tweets. Ask them to do something useful, like research for a paper or create a spreadsheet, and it's a dicey proposition at best. I've also learned that having my students use Excel once a year isn't enough (insert your "duh" here), so I'm trying to work that application into more of my lesson plans.
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