Army of nerds

Look around you. You are surrounded by the lot happily labelled the “digital natives”. They are the inhabitants of a world filled with the baubles and treats of the information and communication technology revolution.

They are at once exposed to devices that would have been considered science fiction less than a century ago. Either they were born with access to the information expressway, or live knowing enough so as to aspire to being on one.

The life and times of the digital native is indeed fast and fickle. Many have lost sight of the true spectrum of the discipline that is computer science.

The study of computer-related knowledge was at first a rarefied space. In India, as the market opened up, so did people come to increasingly realise the myriad possibilities of being an actual participant, of becoming a “user.”

The general outcome was a spike in the chase for formal certifications in computer and computer-adjacent knowledge and skills.

Today, one hears the call to action in nearly every nation, the call to invest in computer literacy.

The branding of access to computer education as ‘computer literacy’ creates a rhetoric that everyone would cheerfully applaud.

The inevitable exposure to the capillaries of a digital world necessitates that the native be able to recognise, respond and engage with it. To that end, computer literacy is indeed a worthy goal.

And yet, there is a need to push the boundaries of this goal, or what we collectively see as “minimum knowledge required.”

Does knowing how to manipulate the very basic functions of an office application tool, necessarily translate to being an effective communicator? Or a creative communicator? Or a meaningful creator? Happily enough, the chorus answer is always no!

There seems to be an intuitive recognition that the devices of the digital world are just that: devices, tools.

The ability to make effective and artistic creations, presentation, and solutions can only emanate from a grasp of the underlying, interconnected concepts.

In order to create a truly effective presentation or computer programme, one would need to know more than how to insert new slides or even fancy animations, or programming language vocabulary and syntax, respectively.

The creative process would be significantly enhanced by a native’s ability to apply thinking-process skills such as stepwise thinking and planning, algorithmic thinking, logical reasoning, analysing needs and seeing the outcomes in the mind’s eye.

These skills are crucial to problem-solving in any field, across any discipline, and are the foundation of computational thinking.

In her recent blog post at Google for Education, Chris Stephenson echoed this idea, “Many people confuse computer science with education technology (the use of computing to support learning in other disciplines) and computer literacy (a very basic understanding of a limited number of computer applications). This confusion leads to the assumption that computer science education is taking place, when in fact in many schools it is not.”

The implication here is not that every individual need become a computer scientist!

Rather, our goals for literacy should expand enough to sow the seeds for the development of cross-computational thinking skills. If it is to be a digital native nation, let it be a creative, thinking one.

The writer is co-founder of InOpen Technologies

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