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 impact the lives not of entire societies, but individuals. I wanted something that would leave time for family, and 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 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 whereas 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.
Your post is along the lines of "having the world in the palms of your hands" (not Max Miller- much older saying). As a society, we are not educated on how to use all of the equipment in our phones. Should there maybe not be so much stuff in them if we only use possibly 20% of the information?
ReplyDeleteThe social experiment is that humans have no self control. We have to stop the merry-go-round. Start small and build. You mentioned instant gratification of students with the phone weapons. One small step is a smile.
My Granny once told me that if you smile at someone, they will always smile back. This typically works. It is kind of like a yawn. Some people will look around wondering if you are smiling at them, while others are too obsorbed in their bad day. Just try.
Another thought is a possible reading outreach with a school during lunch once a week or every two weeks. Similar to libraries where an adult reads to children. If they are not being read to at home, they may give up one recess or part of one to hear someone read to them. How much can that help future students and fellow humans?
I enjoyed your thoughts on your personal writing and how they differ from pen and paper to the keyboard. I was curious if it would have the same or opposite effect with your proposal with children and teens? First the skills of a reader has a direct impact on vocabulary choices. Second, if the student is not fond of reading, are there any activities that could be utilized to strengthen their skills for writing? On the other hand, if students had never to rarely had digital experince at school, their skill level may be quite elevated. That is the hope and the goal. Working at a school, there is variety of educational development. As future teachers, we have to learn how to help all of the students move forward no matter what we hope the curriculum is and what it actually is.
I agree with a lot of the points you make here. While technology is very important for children, and they will likely need access to their phones and such to contact their parents, it’s the source of so much harassment and other issues. ChatGPT further complicates this issue, because even hand-written work can become much harder to diminish.
ReplyDeleteI believe that education shouldn’t be the same as entertainment, and by allowing children to associate satisfaction exclusively with fun, it sets a very dangerous precedent, that will depress them when it comes to living their everyday life.