What are the necessary skills to live in a digital society? That's what Norwegian schools try to find out these days -- and I guess they're doing the same in many other countries.
Here's an example. Yesterday, a friend called me and asked "where on the web can I find the telephone number to my brother in Germany?"
Do you know? What would you do?
She had tried a lot, but just could not find it. Please understand that my friend is a bright, educated woman, who has used the web a lot, both in her job and private life. German is also her mother tongue. Yet, she could not find this number, which I thought should be extremely easy.
My point here is that when you know, you know, and you have difficulty in seeing how it can be difficult for others to obtain the same knowledge. Until yesterday evening, I would never have thought this kind of competence was something we should teach in schools.
My German is shaky, so I checked the spelling with her on the phone as I typed into Google: "telefonnummern Deutschland." Google's second answer seemed the easiest, in fact I should have guessed the URI myself: www.telefonbuch.de. The German Phone Book.
She's not stupid, she's just not as used to using Google as I am. This familiarity that helps you to see the simple solutions is what we need to teach our kids.
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