Computer literacy across the lifespan: A review with implications for educators

Poynton, T. A. (2005). Computer literacy across the lifespan: a review with implications for educators. Computers in Human Behavior, 21, 12.

As a review paper, Poynton provides a clear picture of how the literacy concept has evolved till now and points out the crucial role of being computer literate in modern world. He starts from the traditional idea of being able to read and write which is quoted from Webster’s New World Dictionary back in 1984, and moves into a more recent idea of literacy of being knowledgeable in a field from a dictionary in 2000. Scholars, like Bruce & Levin, emphasize the importance of technology literacy in language art education and a definition from Tsai (2002) suggests the basic knowledge of computer technology is needed by all people. Being computer literate is essential to all people in all fields, including scholars, student, business man…etc and it is beneficial socially and psychological.
Poynton’s paper also serves a good start for those who are new to this concept and field. The literature reviewed is complete and arranged “across the lifespan,” from childhood, young and middle adulthood to older adulthood, and so are the implication he proposed; the symmetrical structure makes it easy to read and compare differences of each lifespan. In childhood section, he introduces the crucial role of early and more access (CAI) to computer technology for children and also the difference between reading real text and reading electronic formats. This part draws attention to adolescence as well. As socialization become more important in this period, the difference between genders is getting blurred, while females tend to treat computer as a social toll and males see it an end itself. Other aspects related to computer literacy, like confidence and attitude, are also examined. In young and middle adulthood, many would meet computer-based tests (TOEFL and GRE) and the computer-related skills become more inevitable. For older adults, computer-related skills and knowledge are not so necessary in their life and they do not grow up with those technology. Thus, interest plays a significant role in their learning of computer usage.
In the last section, Poynton’s proposes several directions for future implication of computer literacy education. Educators should foster positive interests and attitudes in their times, keep providing enough access to computer and help to decrease anxiety. Higher education should integrate computer literacy instruction into all courses. Training for older adults should raise their interest and motivation to learn, as a communication tool. These are all correct and appropriate suggestion, while they are way to general. Educators, as practitioners, need more specific guidelines to follow and each phase of education system requires different thoughts on implementation of literacy education. Also, these implications seem to only match today’s context, but maybe not for ten year later. The technology advances and so are the people. With more and more digital natives, it seems that they would have much less problems functioning basic computer skills. The more serious issues may lie in how, why and for what do you use computer technologies, as do to various perspective of literacy (information literacy, electronic literacy and media literacy) nowadays.