[OT] HyperCard and the Interactive Web

[Richmond]

On 02/26/2012 06:42 AM, Judy Perry wrote:
> You are correct; they have NO IDEA how their file system works.  I'm 
> lucky if they can even recall what they named a file, and they pay 
> ZERO attention to file formats.  One couldn't grasp the concept of 
> overwriting a file.  Sigh.
>
> Judy
>
> On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Peter Bogdanoff wrote:
>
>> When I started working at UCLA in 1996 very few students had used 
>> computers before entering, or at least had used their own computers 
>> rather than a lab one in grade school. Now 15 years later all have a 
>> laptop in class. However, about 3/4 of the Mac-using students in a 
>> music history class use Spotlight to find files and open applications 
>> on their Macs and most of these don't know any other way to find 
>> their files. In other words, they don't really have a clue how the 
>> file system works. I only started to discover this when I had them 
>> install a project that I'm developing and found out that many have 
>> been running it from their Downloads folder and didn't know to do it 
>> any other way.
>>
>> Would you call these people computer-literate? They sure are Web and 
>> social media literate. So the sooner OS X moves to an iOS-type Finder 
>> the better for them. It could be that OS X is just too easy to use 
>> and so they never learn more than Word, Google, YouTube, and 
>> Facebook. The Windows users seem to know a little more, at least 
>> their own version of Samsung Windows or Dell Windows, but it's only a 
>> little more.
>>
>> Peter Bogdanoff
>> UCLA
>

Speaking as a reactionary 50 year old; I think:

1. No child under the age of 14 should be allowed any mathematical 
crutch apart from a slide-rule.

   I find, in my "EFL" school, that kids find sliderules rather 
interesting, and they are able to SEE how numbers
   work; something one cannot do with a pocket calculator.

2. At 14 children should all be given something like a Pentium 2 with 
FreeDOS and taught
     how to navigate themselves around a system with no GUI.

3. At 14 children should be given a course in something like BASIC or 
LISP on that GUI-less computer.

3.1. Probably preceded by a few weeks "doing programming" on paper, and 
messing around with buttons in cups.

4. At 17-18 children should all be given a PC with an operating system 
with a WIMP-GUI on it after
     they have passed a test to demonstrate their familiarity with a 
Terminal emulator.

It is far more IMPORTANT that kids learn to think logically and 
coherently than possess fancy electronic
equipment.

------------------------------------

Why the hell most parents want to CRIPPLE their kids by lobbing them a 
fancy laptop and/or hand-held at about
the same time they are toilet trained escapes me.

Richmond.