I’m so grateful for this class. It was the best way to end the day even when we had already been at school for six hours, I looked forward to the time I spent learning about technology and it’s impact on cognition. The culminating moment of this class was the oxford-style debate in which I sat on the opposite side of the room and argued that smart technology is making us dumber. I was frustrated and emotionally unprepared to argue the counter defense to my own personal beliefs. My life is entrenched in technology and everyday I’m grateful for it! Let’s take a step back and review my process and journey of this course.
I knew that I was a heavy media user. I was raised by a family that incorporates technology in all that we do and we are known for our annual entries into the K-12 PTA Reflections program (using eight different mediums to create artistic products). Yet it was eye opening for me to track my media usage at the beginning of the semester. I’ve kept the app on my phone and in the last 30 days I have used my phone for 5 days 16 hours 41 minutes and 16 seconds. Excessive? Maybe. Yet I’m not the only one. We learned in class discussions and from the Kaiser Foundation article that society continues to increase in technology use! Teenagers (especially the pre-teens) are spending hours of screen time per day. Even children zero to eight are exposed to this technology! In my literature review, I discovered an article by Mark Prensky entitled Turning on the Lights (2008) in which he explains the concept that when students come into our classroom they are no longer unenlightened, but they have already been exposed to the world through the technology available to them! The media is ubiquitous. We just need to learn how to use it.
As I sat on the wrong side of the podium in that stinkin’ debate, I threw around the argument that Nick Carr (2011) makes over and over in his published literature. The brain is affected by technology. Our brain develops back to front and leaves those frontal lobe reasoning and logic skills for the end, also the synapses require multiple pathways to ensure increased recall of the information that was brought to our mind. We must pay attention to the surrounding stimuli (this really dives into the cognitive learning theories). With the constant technology influx Carr believes that we are losing our ability to think deeply and pay attention to the things around us. I respectfully disagree with Carr. I believe that technology is changing our brains and that our brains will adapt to the new ways of learning. We are able to expose ourselves to all sorts of information and it is fine to have knowledge that is a mile long and only an inch deep. All of us will choose our own focuses in life and then we will use our mile long knowledge to deepen our understanding of the things we love. I believe that the vast amount of information gives us the chance to make connections and build the skills (higher-order skills) of the frontal lobe even at an earlier age. This is a good thing – of course technology changes our brain!
Now, flashback to Prensky who coined the term Digital Natives, he was one of the pioneers to envision a cultural shift. He saw that there was a difference in the way children were learning, growing, interacting, speaking and writing. There has been an actual shift in our very culture! Kids these days are not the same as the kids of the past. Our culture is being shifted globally in a horizontal fashion! Facebook is changing the way we view friendships and personal interactions. We have a digital identity within our digital spaces that we’ve created. In our debate we discussed the shy boy that doesn’t have any friends at school, but when he goes home he plays King of Legends (is that what it is called?) and he is the leader of the game! He has friends and is able to exhibit leadership skills that his classroom teacher has never seen! I can see the argument against this (I stood on that side of the room) but I do believe that it is fine for children to have these different experiences! Childhood and adolescent years is all about creating who we are! They don’t need to know who they are yet and our children should take advantage of the technology to discover and create their identity.
Technology is a two-edged sword. It is powerful and effective when used appropriately, but can be detrimental if not honed correctly. As teachers we have the chance to enrich our classrooms with devices, apps, programs, and software – ultimatelyredefining the way we teach. We also may be the teacher who takes our transparencies and slap them onto a PowerPoint (simply substituting the same old way we’ve taught). The evidence shows that students are learning differently, thus we need to be teaching differently! We need to be using our resources to stay updated on the best products out there and use them in the most powerful ways we can discover. I also believe that as leaders of technology in education we have the responsibility to share what we learn. If we use a terrible app and it flops, then we need to pass on the information to our colleagues. We can be presenters at conferences and contributors in technology blogs and twitter conversations. We have the ability to not only increase the higher level skills of our students, but also to increase our own. Technology is here to stay – how are we going to face the challenge? Will we fight against the shift? Or will we open the gates and embrace the change; striving to become a Digital Native?
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