- despite completing the required online enrollment and
- initializing their institutional email and
- accessing the institutional courseware system
did not / will not / don't look at their 'school' email.
Why? They say just prefer to use their personal email account.
No problem right? Wrong.
As I was helping each navigate this new term's expectations, all of which I'd shared via school email, we (each student and I) discovered that they were in danger of being unenrolled from their courses because of loan/fee/payment issues... issues that the Registrar had communicated to them, VIA SCHOOL EMAIL.
Needless to say, they were shocked and embarrassed, and we stopped working on the course communications and I sent them off to speak F-2-F with those that could 'fix' their $$ issues.
I will ask them later, if they have 'Googled' how to set up the their school email to automatically forward missives to their personal email.
Oh me.
--Canadian Crotchety Crank
For rather a long time now, I have been observing that so-called "digital natives" are far less "computer literate" than us oldsters. It goes much beyond not a freaking one of them being able to program in Fortran, or any other computer language such as C++ or Python even if they’re STEM majors. So many of them have spent so much time drooling on themselves with eyes glued to some kind of small screen, their brains have atrophied into a substance resembling bat guano, or more likely, never developed beyond strictly what corporate America requires in the first place. Therefore, they can’t figure out much of anything to do with a computer, and OF COURSE they’ll NEVER read the help files, much less the printed manual (if there even is one). I dread when implanting chips into their brains, the sales pitch for which will be that it’ll make them “supersmart,” becomes common: the Epsilon semi-moron caste of Brave New World will look like physics majors (who can program).
ReplyDeleteI think it's straight-up passive-aggressive behavior.
ReplyDelete"If they want me to know this information bad (sic) enough they'll get it to me how I want them to not how they want me to get it. Wait, what?! No one told me I had to do it that way! I'm being oppressed because you've refused to conform to my learning style! Now where's my free guv'ment money at?"
Agree with both Sawyer and Frod.
ReplyDeleteWe get one of these maybe every 2 years...it's not only school mail with them, it's touching an actual computer (in the most recent cases). In theory, I suppose, you "could" write a great paper using a note-taking app on your i-phone, but I've yet to see one.
Despite help from support staff in setting things up (and repeatedly being informed of the consequences CCC points out) these guys never really sort themselves out, and if they do manage to (eventually) graduate, it's never into a gig related to what our program teaches.