I’m kinda in this generation, so here’s a reference point. Born in 1975, started college in 1993. First classroom computer that I remember was in 3rd grade (83/84). It had a tapedeck and I played a game which was sort of like steering a car between two lines. Around this time, my mother was studying computer science and was programming on giant computers with keypunch cards.
A few years later (86 or so) we learned a bit of LOGO or BASIC in 5th grade. Most of my peers had personal computers such as Apple IIe by 1986-87 or so. They were basically big word processors. I first used the internet in 1991/92 or so as I discovered newsgroups thru my mother’s work sdsu.edu account.
When I entered college, ours was the first class with ethernet wired freshman dorms. Email in 1993 started with “pine.”
Believe it or not, even though I have a bachelor’s degree in a science field and MANY more years of postgraduate/professional education, I have never taken a BIT of computer programming since 1986. I can semi-successfully navigate Windows (mostly thanks to how programs download and autoinstall themselves), and that’s about it. I can definitely say that I semi-grew up in the information age but feel semi-illiterate with regard to anything outside of the internet and basic Microsoft Office products.
All of this being said, I don’t know that giving kids Ipads tackles this problem at all.
