Computer literacy for the rest of us

Abstract

computers? For that matter, what should we teach any students about computers? For some, these questions have lost their relevance. Not only are computers more available than ever before, information about them is easy to find. Mall bookstores and those on college campuses are filled with titles about personal computer software and hardware. Computers have become a commodity technology partly because of this mass of documentation, for the goal of much of it is to make the private, coded discourse of technical professionals accessible to those with no formal training in computers. Not even the advent of the automobile, which marked the previous popular revolution in technology, called forth so much explication of technical matters. Of particular relevance to educators in higher education is the fact that more and more students are exposed to computers before they get to college. According to Snyder and Hoffman (1992, p. 432), the percentage of public schools using microcomputers jumped from 18.2 in 1981 to 97.2 in 1990. This huge growth in under ten years reflects the (banal, but inescapable) impression most of us share: computers are everywhere.