A conversation, two videos, my class and a thought

I keep coming across ideas that I have run into before, and only just now am getting interested in.

I think everyone has seen the “Did you know” video. If not, take the five minutes and watch it. It’s good. I had a discussion today with my wife, also a teacher, about the constant irritating cell phones her students have and (this is a new one) that the new teachers at her school are being described by another teacher as “unable to think deeply”.

That cell phone thing; I know all about it. I do own one, as does my wife, but we don’t use it very often. I have gotten texts, but I can count on one hand the number of times I have responded to one in less than five days. I just didn’t read the texts. I do email. I get back to people very quickly via email. You email me with something I consider important, you will get answer very quickly. People sometimes make fun of my for that, but that is a good thing.

As I am writing this, I am also watching a Frontline video called “Digital Nation”, a follow up to a video I bought on iTunes to show in class sometime next week. It follows students and their interactions with technology. Interesting stuff- and timely, as that is what I am going to be having my students study this module (a six week period for alternative education students).

One MIT prof put the student’s constant interaction with technology down to the student’s need for stimulation. However, I’m not sure about that the assessment of “need for stimulation” is correct. I honestly don’t think that it is what it is, but that assessment smacks of some thing a Digital Immigrant might say about a Digital Native. If someone has a laptop in class, I am hoping they are being productive, regardless of how they might follow that rule.

Another MIT prof talked about testing his students on readings assigned and on lectures that they should be attending. The class average was 75, which to my way of thinking was pretty good, but I guess the standards I have for my students are lower than those of a full on prof at MIT. And I’m guess that they should be. Another prof stated that “A disservice is being done to people by multitasking - that is being in the classroom, and facebooking, on myspace and all the rest of it. There are some things, like school, that we should just be doing one thing at a time.”

MIT and Stanford studied the standard excuse that students give; they are “multitasking” ... and that idea is just incorrect. People, even incredibly smart students like the ones they have at MIT, just should not be doing more than one things at once. As the people that were fined 155 dollars in Ontario if they think they should be texting and driving at he same time....

Which is funny, because while I have been writing this, I have checked my facebook, my email and kept the video playing. And preliminary attmpts to edit this posting are just making me want to stop the video, stop the onrush of information and just focus on my writing.

Can - or would - my students do the same?


One last thought.... as I was putting the polish on this posting, I did one last visual spell check. Blogger also helps with that; underlining in red words that are incorrect. Which is good. Interestingly, all the names of software were also underlined...