John Olinda I'm surprised how much resistance I encounter when teaching high school students to use computers. I'm not talking about anything sophisticated. Things like sending email, using office software, basic programming, and scripting. There's always a chorus of "I don't need to know how to do this!" or "I'm not going to use computers for my job!" I just wish I could somehow show them how much tech really overlaps with the jobs they're considering. Maybe I need to have them shadow someone at work and document his or her use of technology?

Nkrs Maybe you could try showing them something where they could save a lot of time. In my second year at uni we had to calculate errors using the least squares method, which is very tedious to do by hand; I had an Excel spreadsheet where I'd just enter data for X and Y axes and it would spit out results as soon as I typed them. That got my friends interested enough to learn more about Excel; perhaps showing them a practical side of things could help out.

Eric I can't fault the kids for resisting learning the tools they see as leading to boring desk jobs. Try and highlight that learning this stuff is vital so they *don't* wind up in that kind of position in their future lives.

😀 Tom If they're already complaining about trivial stuff like that, it's probably their work/learning ethic, which means having them shadow probably isn't going to work because they won't actively pay attention to that kind of stuff and follow through with the assignment. Is there any kind of teaching lesson you could do that shows that it's usually easier just to do what's asked instead of complaining? A small sacrifice now pays dividends in the future. Maybe have them use Excel and simple formulas to show financial investment to tie the idea in. Kids usually get excited about how much money they could have in the future.

🦿 Lucian Marin You should ask them what they will like to learn, to play, etc. You can show them that computers are useful for all of their activities. Go in their reality instead of bringing them in yours. I find programming complicated and boring, but not when I do something that I enjoy with it.