Sitting down with an 11 year old the other day, je asked me to find an image of one of his favourite cartoons on Google.
I asked him how to spell it as I hadn’t heard of it before, and his response was:
“starts with ph”
assuming (correctly) that Google would probably fill in the blanks and take him to the correct destination. I find myself being lazy also, when writing, as I know that Microsoft word will correct my spelling for me, or Google will make a suggestion based on my spelling.
This “helping hand” is great for the usability of the internet, but not so great for teachers who are trying to reach children the importance of the 3 R’s.
The future
I’m sure in the future, if not already created there will be a suite of apps, and games designed to “dumb down the internet” to force children to learn the basics of spelling etc. For instance the equivalent of writing something in Microsoft Word without spell check turned on to verify if the user had any idea how to spell the word.