Today I watched two sobering videos about the effects of the internet on our planet's youth. These young people will be in charge of our nations and our well being in only a few years and they are being brought up in a way that is almost completely foreign to previous generations. The big question is: Is the internet good or bad for our kids? And I'm certain that there is not good answer to that all powerful questions. You might as well ask what the meaning of life is. Even though the videos didn't answer the big questions they did bring up a number of different good points that I wanted to comment on here.
Here are the videos:
DigitalNation
GrowingUp Online
I found some of the quotes from the films to be very moving. Here are a few that really struck a chord with me.
“Multitaskers are bad at every part of multitasking”
I really agree with this quote in two different ways. I know that I have a personal bad habit of multitasking when I am surrounded by technology. I also know that when I allow myself to multitask my productivity really suffers. I have trained myself in a number of different ways to avoid this by altering my work habits but there are still times when I fall prey to my own sabotage. One of the things I do to avoid my multitasking is to try and get my work done while I am still at work. If I am writing lesson plans or grading tests then I try to do it while I am sitting at my desk in my classroom where I don’t have access to my music and would dream of checking Facebook.
The educator in me can relate to this statement as well. I have seen my students when they are focused and I have seen them when they are distracted by cell phones, iTouches, and laptops and their output is shockingly different. Not only does it take more time to turn out a product when they are focusing on one thing but the quality of that product is far superior. For that reason there are days when I ban music and mp3 players from my classroom. I want my students to feel the silence and try their very best to focus in on a single task without having to worry about anything else.
“It took a long time for us to realize smoking was bad for our health.”
It may be hard to believe but this whole “Internet” thing is still very young and that means that it is still experiencing some growing pains. This is exactly what happened when cigarettes first came into popularity. They received a lot of wonderful press because they could mellow your mood and help you lose weight but then after a long time the ugly truth came out and the public view of smoking drastically changed.
The internet has also receive a lot of very positive press and has definitely made human life easier in a lot of ways but that isn’t the end of the story. Only time will tell exactly how we will view the internet. Maybe some serious changes need to be made. Maybe we will abandon the infrastructure for something even newer, better, and faster. It’s hard to tell. The one truth that I can see right now is that we are just now starting to see some of the ugliness that had been lurking just under the surface.
“To walk into a classroom that doesn’t have any media is like walking into a dessert.”
I thought this was a good reminder for the teacher in me. Many times, it can be so easy for me to go about my day just using a minimal amount of technology. My techniques may have been an effective way to teach lessons when I was a student but they don’t cut the mustard anymore. Often times I just fall into comfortable routines and do what I’ve done in the past but that doesn’t mean that my lessons are as good as they could be. When I reflect back on my methods I always feel like I could do more. I know there are tools out there that could make my lessons better but I need to be reminded from time to time.
“We have LCD projectors in almost every classroom.”
This particular statement was uttered by a high school principal in one of the films and although it seems like a very one dimensional quote I saw a deeper meaning. There is a very big emphasis in updating the technology in schools right now. So many times, people outside of the classroom focus almost entirely on “the toys” (LCD projectors, SMART boards, laptops, graphing calculators) and not the training, searching, and experimenting that goes into actually using “the toys” effectively in a lesson. A SMART board on its own will not help students learn their grammar fact or prepare them from their future careers. A quality teacher is still the most important element in any classroom. This doesn’t mean that technology shouldn’t be welcomed into every classroom. I feel like technology is a great teaching tool but it needs to work harmoniously with teachers in order to reap the greatest benefits.
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