To start off this week, I Googled
myself. I had never done this before and I was surprised to not find
much. I thought that I might find some articles on the website for
the college that I attended or links to my districts website. Of
course, I found a link to Facebook. I thought that I had very good
security settings, yet a Facebook search showed my age, where I live,
and other things that I thought I had restricted to friends only. I
don't even share my entire birthdate with my friends, so I'm not
impressed that is out there! I will definitely be doing some more
research here.
I found the information about the
gaming detox centers in South Korea very interesting. I still do not
quite understand how gaming and being connected is so much more
connected in that country but I understand how individuals could
become addicted to online video games. I'm glad that the documentary
included a portion about the social side to online gaming. I have
family and friends that game online a lot, so I know firsthand that
gamers are not all anti-social geeks. They do form real friendships
and relationships online. Isn't it close to how teachers learn and
collaborate together online? They're forming relationships in the
same way, except through a hobby, not a profession.
There is one point that I disagree with
that a few different places were talking about- multitasking. Last
summer I took the course Theories of Learning and Cognitive
Development. We read a book by John Medina that disproved the concept
of multitasking. According to Medina, people who can “multitask”
well can simply between different tasks quicker than others. They are
not truly doing two things at once though. The study in the
documentary just showed that those individuals could not multitask as
well as they thought. I would like to know what that study learned
about multitasking in general.
As for the NET-S and teaching digital
citizenship standards to students, I think that if students are using
technology at all in the classroom, then digital citizenship should
be addressed. Not doing this would be like expecting students to
perform group work well or get along well at recess without teachingsocial skills. Schools have begun explicitly teaching social skills
to students because it is necessary. While things like social skills
and digital citizenship should be addressed at home, some students
won't have that opportunity. If our job as educators is to prepare
our students for their futures, then we would be doing them a
disservice by not teaching them social skills and technology skills.
For the next school year, I hope that I
can plan and pace out the beginning of the year better. I feel as
though with all of the routines and procedures I have to teach my
students in their first month of middle school I had a hard time
fitting in a lot of digital citizenship lessons. I had hoped to cover
more digital citizenship lessons before allowing Bring Your Own
Device to start in my classroom. However, it came time to start units
which include lessons that I designed to use with BYOD. So, I started
BYOD for the year even though I hadn't covered all the digital
citizenship lessons that I had found and made. Of course I had
planned to cover digital citizenship in steps through out the year,
but there were some things that I wanted to cover before allowing
students to bring in devices. I guess I just have to live and learn
and plan better next year!
Thank you for sharing that article about multi-tasking. I found those points quite interesting as I have pondered the benefits and drawbacks to my multi-tasking personality. It is as if that article was written to remind me how unproductive I am actually being.
ReplyDeleteSome of the points that I pulled out....
"The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it."
My question in regards to that is, what am I actually doing then, if my brain is not capable of doing more than one thing at a time? Currently I have nine browser tabs open....yikes!
"Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. This is why cell-phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes and get in more wrecks."
I better rethink my cell phone usage. Being a busy mom of two, my time to catch up with my family and friends on the phone is during a long drive. My husband doesn't like that I drive and talk on the phone at the same time, but I always view it as the same as having a conversation with someone that is sitting next to me in the car.
"Workplaces and schools actually encourage this type of multi-tasking. Walk into any office and you’ll see people sending e-mail, answering their phones, Instant Messaging, and on MySpace—all at the same time. Research shows your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things."
This might explain my typos.....
"When you’re always online you’re always distracted. So the always online organization is the always unproductive organization."
I wonder if this extends to smartphone usage. I almost always have my phone within reach. Does this mean that I am always "online"? My husband and I are thinking about installing a "no phone" rule while the kids are awake. All this time, I thought that I was just being productive and efficient - making the most of my time, you know?!
Definitely some points to ponder....
I really think it is so important to start right out with digital citizenship especially that you have byod coming along! What a better way to introduce proper use and be able to model that before any issues arise.
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