What blew my mind was when I had a teacher telling me about their experiences with Zoomers and indicated that they seem to have a near universal inability to grasp the concept of a file structure. They just apparently can’t wrap their heads around the fact that when you save something that it has to actually go somewhere on their device.
If I pick up a notebook and scribble something in it, the next time I pick up the notebook whatever I scribbled will still be there. It’s very unusual that when a computer shuts down the RAM is cleared. Making it worse for intuitive understanding, a lot of apps are constantly saving and restoring state without any user intervention, making it seem like a notebook that just keeps state whenever you use it.
The implementation detail that RAM is very fast but doesn’t store state but flash is slightly slower but does store state is something that you have to learn. To actually understand why RAM doesn’t store state you need to understand how it’s built, and how capacitors can store charge for a short time but need to be refreshed. Why flash / electrically erasable memory works the way it does is yet another university-level class.
Add to that that the concept of a “file” and a “filesystem” are not obvious at all. The concept got its name from actual paper documents being strung together with wire. The name was used in early computer work as a skeuomorph to make understanding computer storage easier. This data on disk is grouped together in a “file” just like you’d group together pages of text into a “file”.
If we were designing things from scratch today, the concept of a “file” or “filesystem” would probably not exist. We’d probably just go with a key-value store on top of some kind of B-tree stuff directly on the flash memory.
The only reason older people learned these things is that they dealt with computers that were not as user friendly. If someone is young enough, they probably experienced turning off a computer and losing all their stuff because they hadn’t saved. And, saving was cumbersome for a long time. You had to actually decide what filename to use and where on the filesystem to store something. One of the biggest pushes in computing in the last couple of decades is to make all that easier, to make it so that files are saved automatically and you never have to see a file browser or a filename. Sure, the underlying system is still all files, directories, etc. But, that’s just not something that people encounter anymore.
Do you have to read for fun for it to be functional literacy?
It seems to me that kids are perfectly literate. They start texting, instant messaging, commenting on things, etc. from a very young age. That’s all reading and writing, which is all literacy. Do you have a source for this 2nd grade reading level? Because, although the slang used by the youngs is annoying, it certainly doesn’t seem 2nd grade level to me.
Kind of amazing that I have to tell you that in a discussion about literacy.
The ‘reads for fun’ and ‘lowest category of reading/writing ability’ are seperate statistics, they are not dependent on or derived from each other, they were measured separately… they are just the two the article focused on, out of a larger report, which is linked in the article, which you can read in its entirety if you want to.
I am astounded that, in a discussion about literacy, I provided the source, and you somehow did not read it or investigate it at all, and am now asking me for the source.
Fact-checking and basic research skills are part of intermediate literacy levels, which you apparently do not possess, so I suppose that is why everything seems fine to you.
What blew my mind was when I had a teacher telling me about their experiences with Zoomers and indicated that they seem to have a near universal inability to grasp the concept of a file structure. They just apparently can’t wrap their heads around the fact that when you save something that it has to actually go somewhere on their device.
To be fair, it’s not an obvious concept.
If I pick up a notebook and scribble something in it, the next time I pick up the notebook whatever I scribbled will still be there. It’s very unusual that when a computer shuts down the RAM is cleared. Making it worse for intuitive understanding, a lot of apps are constantly saving and restoring state without any user intervention, making it seem like a notebook that just keeps state whenever you use it.
The implementation detail that RAM is very fast but doesn’t store state but flash is slightly slower but does store state is something that you have to learn. To actually understand why RAM doesn’t store state you need to understand how it’s built, and how capacitors can store charge for a short time but need to be refreshed. Why flash / electrically erasable memory works the way it does is yet another university-level class.
Add to that that the concept of a “file” and a “filesystem” are not obvious at all. The concept got its name from actual paper documents being strung together with wire. The name was used in early computer work as a skeuomorph to make understanding computer storage easier. This data on disk is grouped together in a “file” just like you’d group together pages of text into a “file”.
If we were designing things from scratch today, the concept of a “file” or “filesystem” would probably not exist. We’d probably just go with a key-value store on top of some kind of B-tree stuff directly on the flash memory.
The only reason older people learned these things is that they dealt with computers that were not as user friendly. If someone is young enough, they probably experienced turning off a computer and losing all their stuff because they hadn’t saved. And, saving was cumbersome for a long time. You had to actually decide what filename to use and where on the filesystem to store something. One of the biggest pushes in computing in the last couple of decades is to make all that easier, to make it so that files are saved automatically and you never have to see a file browser or a filename. Sure, the underlying system is still all files, directories, etc. But, that’s just not something that people encounter anymore.
I mean… entirely seriously:
A large percentage of them are also functionally illiterate.
https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-parents-children-reading-literacy-crisis-2081875
The % of kids that ‘read for fun everyday’ has dropped from 35% in 1984 to 14% in 2023.
Functionally illiterate reading levels of the whole US population?
19% in 2017.
28% in 2023.
Again, for emphasis: 28% of all Americans are functionally illiterate.
They can’t read beyond a ‘Hop on Pop’ level.
Nearly a third of the US population is at a 2nd grade reading level.
And that near 10% increase in 6 years… thats 6 years of Zoomers graduating high school and becoming adults.
… Only gonna be worse for Gen Alpha.
Do you have to read for fun for it to be functional literacy?
It seems to me that kids are perfectly literate. They start texting, instant messaging, commenting on things, etc. from a very young age. That’s all reading and writing, which is all literacy. Do you have a source for this 2nd grade reading level? Because, although the slang used by the youngs is annoying, it certainly doesn’t seem 2nd grade level to me.
Read the link I provided.
That is the source, that is why I provided it.
Kind of amazing that I have to tell you that in a discussion about literacy.
The ‘reads for fun’ and ‘lowest category of reading/writing ability’ are seperate statistics, they are not dependent on or derived from each other, they were measured separately… they are just the two the article focused on, out of a larger report, which is linked in the article, which you can read in its entirety if you want to.
I am astounded that, in a discussion about literacy, I provided the source, and you somehow did not read it or investigate it at all, and am now asking me for the source.
Fact-checking and basic research skills are part of intermediate literacy levels, which you apparently do not possess, so I suppose that is why everything seems fine to you.