Handshakes and Hand Grenades
Greetings! Are the iPad kids 'cooked'? (no they'll be alright)
Happy Friday! I know that title is a bit of a doozy, so I'll start off small with handshake. Nice to meet you all! My name is Jeremy I'm in my last semester at CSUN (finally!) after six, yes, SIX years of college. I graduated in 2019 and had the bright idea that I wanted to be a big Hollywood director one day. It was a lofty dream, to be sure, but one that I was never fully committed to. Every time I told someone I wanted to be a director I couldn't help but feel like I was trying to convince myself it was true. I was uncertain. So, I entered community college (shoutout to Pasadena City College) tentatively pursuing film. Of course, not even nine months later in March of 2020 the world collapsed in on itself. I spent the next three years taking some classes and bouncing between film, television, radio, and then back to film as my major. By 2022 I was adamant I would apply to film school. I had put in the work and actually completed my entire portfolio, but as I sat with my application completed and awaiting submission, I stopped. I thought, "is this what I really want?" And the answer was no. I wanted a career that didn't sap my energy. A life free of the next big thing, months of shooting on location, press tours, studio politics, and the inevitable crash and burn. And that was if everything went well. I decided I wanted a career where I mattered, where I could positively affect the lives not of entire societies, but individuals. I wanted something that would leave time for family, vacations, and a home. So, I considered what I was good at and here I am. In the next couple years, if all goes right, I'll be teaching English.
Now for the second heavier part. Inside each of our pockets is a bomb. It weighs about half a pound, is about the same size as your hand, and has more computing power than the entirety of NASA on the Apollo 11 mission. It's your smartphone. While our phones are our greatest tools, they are also our most dangerous and self-destructive weapons. Nearly all of human knowledge sitting in your pocket and we use it to watch AI slop which leads me to the question I posed above. Are the iPad kids 'cooked?'
What we, as teachers, will face is a generation of children raised on instant gratification and an underdeveloped ability to find pleasure in reading. Reading is hard. Think about what your brain is doing in reading this blog post. It's taking in the visual stimulation of black pixels on a white backdrop, yes. But it is also interpreting those visual signals into words and then deriving meaning from it. You may be imagining me speaking. You almost certainly 'hear' a voice in your head. It's work. It's why our brains prefer scrolling endlessly on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, anything that isn't academia. So, what role should technology play in the classroom?
My inner Luddite wants nothing to do with any screen; to go old-school. Pen and paper only. Handwritten assignments. The works. But is that fair to these kids? They enter the age of information, and it is highly digital. I write differently when I type than when I write by hand. I can work faster, edit in real time and save money on materials while doing it. Yet my writing can bloat while when I write on paper, when my fingers cannot keep-up with my mind, my words become more deliberate. More succinct. For the kids and teens, we will be teaching in the future, it's our job to give them the skills to tackle either job.
Technology can be a bane in the classroom but also boon. It's up to how we use it. A phone doesn't have to be an intellectual hand grenade, but a tool. The so-called iPad kids know technology better than any generation before them, so we should use that. Teach them when certain programs and approaches on a screen are useful and what the limitations are. After that, it's up to them.
