The "Digital Nation"
In Wednesday's class we viewed a documentary about the effect that technology is having on students study habits and ultimately their grades. Here is the link if you would like to watch it for yourself, I will warn you though, it is long:
Basically, the documentary follows a woman who is concerned for her family due to their overuse of laptops and cell phones. The woman, and her friend/assistant, travel to M.I.T. (the Massachusetts Institute for Technology) because the students there are assumed to be the most "plugged in" in terms of technological use and ability. While there they test and interview a few students who say that their multi-tasking abilities help them when studying or writing an exam; however, the tests prove otherwise. The students are in fact hindered by their "amazing multi-tasking skills" because their brains are simply not able to switch from one topic to another as quickly as they assume. For example, one student was talking about writing an essay; studies show that students are no longer writing essays for their entirety, but in fact are writing for the paragraph. This means that students will write a paragraph and then stop, and then go back and write another.. the problem is that in most cases the paragraphs are hardly connected, they have a lack of continuity because the student did not flow from one to the next. In simple terms, the pausing between paragraphs ends up showing in the students work because while taking that break his or her mind went off course; onto something else, and so when he or she came back to the essay that flow of ideas was interrupted.
So, the question is...
is the availability of new technology causing students to depend more on it and less on themselves?
I say, YES!
There is a book that was mentioned in the film called:
I personally agree with the title of this book; although, there will always be exceptions to any idea or theory.. like me! I do not feel that I am part of the "dumbest generation", I know that I am extremely intelligent. However, I do see stupidity all around me (not to be rude). Just the other day a friend of mine posted a picture that her English teacher had asked the class to design a visual response for. Here is the picture:
Her comment on the picture was this: "our school does not allow smoking. period. not at all. they give out smoking tickets, and have lectures at assemblies about how they dont want smoking around the school. however this was the picture they gave my class to write a visual response to today."
A mutual friend replied with this comment: "they give it to you cause the poster itself is ironic. they like it when you talk about how they're enjoying the smokes but life isnt really like that and shit like that. the teachers arent in the break room going "hey everyone, I'm teasing the kids with the smoking pictures again"..."
Personally, I think that by high school a student should be able to see the deeper meaning in a picture like this. It is highly unlikely that the teacher assigned this picture to the class and asked for a visual response simply to tease the smokers... I really do not understand how my friend got that message out of this assignment.
Now, leading back into the "dumbest generation" topic, I feel that the example shown demonstrates how the author is right in his assumptions. A high school student needs to have the ability to not take things, like this picture, at face value.. if a teacher assigns something there is going to be more to it than what my friend assumed (her assumption was horribly off track). I find it sad that people, like my friend, can go through 11 years of schooling and still not see the underlying message in a source such as this picture. Based on this example I am afraid for future generations because if people are this narrow-minded and simple-minded now, imagine how much worse they could be in the future.
It makes me wonder what the students will be like in four years, when I have my Bachelor of Education and I am teaching grade 11 English in Vancouver. Will they be unteachable?
Thank you for reading,
Sincerely,
Natasha.
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