Growing Up Online

To anyone who hasn’t watched the PBS special Growing Up Online yet, you definitely should, because I just finished watching it and it is so mind-boggling; in a good way.

I would like to point out that the video showed a teacher who commented on the fact that we need to “entertain” students.  This baffled me.  I understand incorporating technology into our teaching for the sake of benefiting our students’ learning, but we shouldn’t feel as though we need to use technology just to entertain our students.  Students are in school to learn, not to be entertained.  If we felt it necessary to “entertain” the students with our teaching, then we should be rapping/singing our lessons instead of lecturing.  We should be break-dancing while reading aloud.  Our first and foremost concern should be making sure the students are learning as much as they can.  Technology should be an added bonus that makes the teaching process and the learning experience easier on both teachers and students. 

And another thing:  While technology can help make the learning process easier, it should only make it easier for students to understand, not easier on them personally.  If that makes any sense.  We should view technology as another way to present the material, not necessarily as a shortcut to find the answers; which I’m afraid is how most students view it.  Looking up answers online, copying/pasting to write papers, and using Spark-notes instead of reading is not what students should be doing, although unfortunately its a known fact that they do.  To quote one of the students in the PBS video: “I can’t remember the last time I read a book.”  As a teacher, that comment is devastating to hear.  I was watching Rachael Ray this week and there was a segment on “Re-dos,” talking about what people would re-do in their life.  One of the assistants on the show confessed that in college he bought a paper online and submitted it as his own.  Some schools have programs to find out when things like this happen, but what about the schools that don’t?  Or what about when students outsmart these programs and can suddenly get away with getting an A on work that really isn’t their own…?

Day One

After last night’s class, I started thinking more and more about how technology has changed over the years.  One statistic that really caught my eye during the video we watched was that a very large percentage of children by the age of four have already used a computer.  I think the reason that statistics like these, and others that show how young children are accustomed to technology these days, are scary is that this type of technology was not around when we were young.  On the other hand, I have had a computer in my home ever since I was born, and my parents tell me I used it as young as four or five to play games; since there was no such thing as the internet yet.  My earliest recollection of using the internet comes at about age 12 or so, which is a lot older than children these days that use the internet, but probably a lot younger than the age other classmates may have began.

Computers are not the only technology that has expanded over the years.  Cell phones, for example, are something that continue to surprise me.  I got my first cell phone at age 17-18, and it was one of those pre-paid TracPhones.  I didn’t get a Verizon cell phone plan until I was 20.  It is semi-understandable for my 14 year old cousin to have one, so that he can call his mom after sport’s practices to pick him up, but my cousin that is 7? Why does she need one?  Who is she even calling…Bert and Ernie?  When I was 7, I played with a $12 set of Lincoln Logs, not a $200 IPod or a $300 cell phone.  It’s things like this that scare me to think of what 20 years from now will be like.