4 ms·

I think judging someone's understanding of technology by their aptitude of ... editing a word document may not be the most appropriate way of doing it? At best

by Eikon 5y ago

I think judging someone's understanding of technology by their aptitude of ... editing a word document may not be the most appropriate way of doing it? At best, this test measures the ability of someone editing a word document, and poorly at that.

wmf 5y ago
Lawyers [edit: and law students] spend a lot of time editing Word documents. If someone has such low proficiency at skills that are essential to their job/studies, their general computer skills are probably even worse.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nikita2206 5y ago
  I don’t think that there’s motivation to optimize for the look of the end document that they write, they have to produce a lot of text, not a bunch of well formatted pages. A lot of people drive a car everyday but don’t know how to change oil for example.
  - raynr 5y ago
    Formatting isn't just looks. Formatting can cover properly numbered paragraphs, with a hierarchy so that you always know which subsection you are referring to. So that when you have to insert new paragraphs in the middle of 50, 500, 1000 paragraphs, the numbering flows naturally. It can include styling, making sure consistent headers are used, so that the navigation pane is actually useful. Consistent application of styles between team members also means copy-paste between documents works exactly as intended, with the pasted content automatically and correctly adopting the header, numbering, and font styles of the document. Correct cross referencing can make it such that word automatically updates references to paragraph numbers when they change. Hyperlinking can be a godsend when you are working in a long document with multiple defined terms and interlinked sections. All of these "mere" formatting features are a godsend when a team of 5 is working on one giant document.
    - oytis 5y ago
      A lot of this sounds like having skills related to producing large structured documents, regardless of the technical means. Sure it requires training. You could as well let people design something in ArchiCAD.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
It might not be perfect, but in my opinion whole notion of someone being "diginative" by virtue of being born after some magical year is stupid. I've watched my nephew (born late 90s) and niece (born late 00s) usage of technology and I can say confidently that neither is what I would call diginative. Just setting up a phone is something they rather have me do or at least be present since as soon as there is any paragraph of text on the screen that is more than five words long their eyes just glaze over. People somehow confuse social media usage as being able to use the Internet and knowing how technology works, which is just plain silly. With mobile apps it might give you a tiny edge, but even there almost no one browses through options and sees what things do - to me THAT is what separates diginative from general populace. To willingly go into unknown digital places to explore and then bring out the good parts while avoiding the bad parts. It is more a mindset than anything else.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  But "native" as a word still imply some sort of birth date :D I mean when I asked my grandad a while ago why he wasnt just getting the internet he told me when he was my age, horses were used to pick trashes up. For him, all that floats above his head. He s not a digital native. I probably am not either because I remember a time when there was no internet and PCs were a luxury. What you re describing is more the difference between digital savvyness and lack of it. They still are born in it and cant probably live without a phone.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > I probably am not either because I remember a time when there was no internet and PCs were a luxury. On the other hand I regard myself as a digital native for precisely that reason: I and computers grew up together. I'm 67 and I was around to see and use early versions of computers, media players (portable cassette players), etc., and all the version between then and now. I'm quite confident that I am as well equipped to use any of the current technology as my children.
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    > But "native" as a word still imply some sort of birth date :D That is not true. Native is associated with place not time. It is only associated with date in this very specific context.
raynr 5y ago
The author's point is that being named a "digital native", a term that is often used to describe young people who seem to be very comfortable with using "technology", does not actually mean that digital native is proficient at using any particular aspect of that technology. The author is a lawyer, and legal work requires you to work extensively with word documents and word processing, so proficiency with word is a good anecdote to illustrate his point. I looked at the task list he uses and they are critical basic skills for legal work, I don't think they are poor measures at all. When your document is 400 pages long and being worked on by multiple people, it really helps if everyone knows how to maintain proper styling for navigation, auto update cross-references to paragraphs, hyperlink to definitions and named sections, and then strip it of identifying information so that it can be presented clean to the client. If even one person can't do this, it mangles the document.

by Eikon 5y ago

wmf 5y ago

Lawyers [edit: and law students] spend a lot of time editing Word documents. If someone has such low proficiency at skills that are essential to their job/studies, their general computer skills are probably even worse.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nikita2206 5y ago
I don’t think that there’s motivation to optimize for the look of the end document that they write, they have to produce a lot of text, not a bunch of well formatted pages. A lot of people drive a car everyday but don’t know how to change oil for example.
- raynr 5y ago
  Formatting isn't just looks. Formatting can cover properly numbered paragraphs, with a hierarchy so that you always know which subsection you are referring to. So that when you have to insert new paragraphs in the middle of 50, 500, 1000 paragraphs, the numbering flows naturally. It can include styling, making sure consistent headers are used, so that the navigation pane is actually useful. Consistent application of styles between team members also means copy-paste between documents works exactly as intended, with the pasted content automatically and correctly adopting the header, numbering, and font styles of the document. Correct cross referencing can make it such that word automatically updates references to paragraph numbers when they change. Hyperlinking can be a godsend when you are working in a long document with multiple defined terms and interlinked sections. All of these "mere" formatting features are a godsend when a team of 5 is working on one giant document.
  - oytis 5y ago
    A lot of this sounds like having skills related to producing large structured documents, regardless of the technical means. Sure it requires training. You could as well let people design something in ArchiCAD.

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

It might not be perfect, but in my opinion whole notion of someone being "diginative" by virtue of being born after some magical year is stupid. I've watched my nephew (born late 90s) and niece (born late 00s) usage of technology and I can say confidently that neither is what I would call diginative. Just setting up a phone is something they rather have me do or at least be present since as soon as there is any paragraph of text on the screen that is more than five words long their eyes just glaze over. People somehow confuse social media usage as being able to use the Internet and knowing how technology works, which is just plain silly. With mobile apps it might give you a tiny edge, but even there almost no one browses through options and sees what things do - to me THAT is what separates diginative from general populace. To willingly go into unknown digital places to explore and then bring out the good parts while avoiding the bad parts. It is more a mindset than anything else.

secondaryacct 5y ago
But "native" as a word still imply some sort of birth date :D I mean when I asked my grandad a while ago why he wasnt just getting the internet he told me when he was my age, horses were used to pick trashes up. For him, all that floats above his head. He s not a digital native. I probably am not either because I remember a time when there was no internet and PCs were a luxury. What you re describing is more the difference between digital savvyness and lack of it. They still are born in it and cant probably live without a phone.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > I probably am not either because I remember a time when there was no internet and PCs were a luxury. On the other hand I regard myself as a digital native for precisely that reason: I and computers grew up together. I'm 67 and I was around to see and use early versions of computers, media players (portable cassette players), etc., and all the version between then and now. I'm quite confident that I am as well equipped to use any of the current technology as my children.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  > But "native" as a word still imply some sort of birth date :D That is not true. Native is associated with place not time. It is only associated with date in this very specific context.

raynr 5y ago

The author's point is that being named a "digital native", a term that is often used to describe young people who seem to be very comfortable with using "technology", does not actually mean that digital native is proficient at using any particular aspect of that technology. The author is a lawyer, and legal work requires you to work extensively with word documents and word processing, so proficiency with word is a good anecdote to illustrate his point. I looked at the task list he uses and they are critical basic skills for legal work, I don't think they are poor measures at all. When your document is 400 pages long and being worked on by multiple people, it really helps if everyone knows how to maintain proper styling for navigation, auto update cross-references to paragraphs, hyperlink to definitions and named sections, and then strip it of identifying information so that it can be presented clean to the client. If even one person can't do this, it mangles the document.