Sorry to those of you not interested.
Has anyone working in a public library noticed how children use computers? In the branch library I work in we have noticed recently that children using our PATs have become lazy when researching projects for school. Whereas in the past they wanted book after book, now the first site on the internet is printed out and the material handed into school, very often I suspect unread. Teachers in our local school have also noticed this habit. We have all of the classes of the local primary school visit us every week for library skills sessions and I have been trying to teach the older classes how to use the internet efficiently and safely and I have noticed also that children with quite good comprehension skills do not translate them to using the computer. They simply do not READ what is on the screen. They look at images on the screen and want instant information fed to them. Those who do not rely on print-outs copy verbatim what the site contains but can repeat very little !
of the
information in their own words. I would be interested to find out if this is a local phenomenon or is it wide spread?
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