Saturday, October 20, 2007

STUDENTS AND TECHNOLOGY

There are many references in this weeks readings to wired students. I think we need a new magazine named WI-FI because many technology gadgets are not even wired anymore, they are WIRELESS with Bluetooth, etc.! A student can study at Carnegie Mellon's University Open Learning Initiative (OLI) with a wireless laptop. In the Wired article it states that even preschoolers can use computers and it's true. They are net savvy and that is why studies and frameworks are beginning to pop up into our curricula. "Technology in our blood?" A new series depicting space characters like those in Star Trek or Star Wars comes to mind.

Perhaps they prefer the to post their personal and social ills globally and it does not seem so shocking. The Science News article was not shocking to me. I know that teenagers are cutting and it can be in your own home. Trust me I know. It really escalated when the low budget movie THIRTEEN hit the theaters and rental outlets in 2003. Right about the time adolescents of the 21st century could be persuaded that cutting helps relieve the pain of growing up in a dysfunctional world where they were caught between chalkboards, whiteboards, and computers. For these students, parents didn't discuss teen differences like on Leave It To Beaver , when trouble brewed. It's no wonder the NET GENERATION today have a hard time finding themselves. It's not ego or ID. It's internet! Thankfully though, on a positive note from the article, leadership skills and better readers come out of these social networks. Beaver or the Nelson's probably would not have paid to browse in a Net Cafe...they solved problems the traditional way. Parents have a much harder time overseeing their child's internet use. Kids know how to hide their tracks by erasing history and other techniques. They can also bypass passwords and hack into other computers for free net use and plain nosiness. Some hack for criminal use. Look how fast the kid who broke the iPhone code did it!

To top it off the Net Gen can get free iPods, Blackberry's and tablet PC's for going to college. I want to go to THAT COLLEGE! So trendy, pretty soon I predict we will be seeing Abercrombie & Fitch personalized PC's. All the talk about justification for cutting class ~ how can a teacher or professor compete when the syllabus and assignments are posted! We can't say they are not turning in their work...they are! And the motivated ones are learning faster, so they can get to the stuff they really want to learn about. We still have the procrastinators too. Instead of the dog eating their homework they say the internet went down or their iPod had a glitch. To my point in my last blog. Who wants a robotic Tiny Tim? Are we becoming so digital we are becoming dehumanized?

2 comments:

Eddie Dominguez said...

I like your thoughts!

Nate Maas said...

I like your thoughts too. The kid that cracked the iPhone did not do it with criminal intent, he did it so that he could use the iPhone on another service provider. It's like wanting to use a German car on American roads. Might be criminal (according to the law), but really shouldn't be, it's just bad law.