Question 8: Share your overall reactions and thoughts about each documentary. Please relate it to your views as a teacher/parent/coach/etc. What did you learn, find interesting, find disturbing, relate to, did not relate to, etc. that you would like to share with others?
There are so many great benefits that technology has to offer, but where do you draw the line? How much connectedness is too much? After watching the two Frontline videos, Growing Up Online and Digital Nation, I have mixed feelings. Growing Up Online stated that ninety percent of teens are online and the number is growing. I’m sure the number is even higher today. The world we are preparing our students for is different than the world we grew up in. Going on the net is no longer something that one does, it’s the way that one lives according to Digital Nation. It seems that there are two schools of thoughts when it comes to technology in the classroom. One is to bring technology into the classroom and meet students where they are living, online. The other thought is that schools are one of the few places conversations can happen that aren’t being bombarded by machines.
I don’t see anything wrong with being connected and I believe that technology is a valuable teaching tool. What I think is hard to hear is that teachers feel like they need to be entertainers. Students consume so much media, it’s the only way to cut through the cloud and get their attention. To a degree, good teachers probably are entertainers but to hear how today’s students are so used to instant gratification is worrisome. As a teacher, I often think about do we integrate technology to keep students engaged or are we just contributing to students being overexposed to an immediate response? I’m not sure what the answer is other than to approach it with a balance in mind.
I found the information about multi-tasking to be very interesting. To hear students feel that they always need to be connected to their social situations during academic times was surprising to me. Listening to some of the college students on the video speak about how they were constantly checking emails, texts and Facebook to stay connected did sound like an addiction to me. All of these students who claimed to be “multi-tasking” seemed like they were doing many things, but none of them well. When we were in high school, we weren’t even allowed to pass notes. It seemed as though it was hard enough for teachers to break that habit. I can’t imagine being a middle school or high school teacher and having to manage students and their electronic devices. I would imagine that this is going to have to be a whole new chapter written into classroom management textbooks. As stated in Digital Nation, “Technology is not good or bad, it’s powerful. Finding the balance is important, but will take time.”
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