Interactivity #1

Coming from a teacher’s perspective, Olivia’s relationship to technology strikes me as both a huge opportunity and a huge danger to her learning. With less convenient access to technology, one would expect that Olivia might be lagging behind some of her peers in her ability to handle computers or cell phones with the same level of dexterity, but she clearly demonstrates how quickly and confidently she can type on both. However, the speed and comfort she has doesn’t necessarily translate to aiding her when she’s working on a project – one huge thing I noticed is that in spite of her speed typing, her MySpace page is absolutely LITTERED with spelling mistakes. Now, this isn’t to say that this suggests that she’d have lousy grammar when applying herself – she most likely picks this habit up from all of her friends, and the misspellings are intentional. However, it’s important as a teacher to realize that a lot of her free time (several hours a day usually) is spent in this world that discourages proper academic practices in writing, and it may be crucial to ensure that her written work doesn’t reflect these habits.

Another thing that strikes me as a red flag is something one of the teachers in this video mentioned, that a lot of these kids’ first instinct is to go to their MySpace or Facebook page. Olivia is in the same boat – she has limited access to technology, but because of how she spends her time on the computer she might have a hard time hopping online to begin researching for a project. Again, this is where a teacher or parent would have to keep an eye out to make sure her online study habits are solid in spite of the distractive nature of most of these sites. Even in my own academic career I’ve had to be very cautious with keeping Facebook open in a side tab while trying to search for information and finish projects.

In my life, there were three main areas of technological communication advances that were very significant. First was instant (later text) messaging, which allowed me to multitask conversations alongside other tasks I could do, like homework or even other types of browsing. Second was the growth of online gaming, where I could take a hobby that was already fun to me and compete or cooperate with friends or meet new ones. Third was the evolution of portable internet devices. Even though smartphones are only recently taking off, having the wealth of knowledge of all the internet streamlined and with you everywhere you go has already become an incredibly difficult thing to live without. The last one in particular has really had an impact on my learning in recent years, with being able to serve as a quick information resource or even just for organizing my plans and work.

The students in this video really use the technology in the same way that I do, which I think it something that will be important in my classroom in the future. I may not want to waste huge amounts of class time with a discussion on how great Xbox live is, but I believe that the lack of a gap between students and myself technologically will be a great asset. Being a bit older and having made mistakes with the same technology that they’re using, I will hopefully get plenty of opportunities to steer them away from the more harmful habits that can set them back. I feel that the tendency to overestimate one’s ability to multitask and to be drawn into the more ‘fun’ (ahem, distracting) sites that completely ruin productivity. Quite frankly, it took me way too long in my own life to draw a very distinct line between my online social life and the work I had to get done, and I hope that I can impart the wisdom I’ve eventually gained upon my future students.