Education v. Technology

My first reaction to the book, Reclaiming Conversation by sherry Turkle, I was overwhelmed with everything that I had just read, multi tasking, hyper attention and so much more. She argues the impacts on technology in the classroom.

My experience growing up in first a public school, being homeschooled, moving to a private school and then back again to public school, I have seen multiple different policies in act and been in a plethora of atmospheres to accommodate this.

In my public school the first round, I was in kindergarten and first grade, so there was a no gum policy but that was about it.

When my mother pulled me out and in to homeschooling, I saw a different ideals for media and technology. Our rule at home was no recreational use of our electronics unless we were all done with our work. If we did use them before, they would be taken away. If you know me at all, you know that I have a knack  with pushing the limits and therefore, got my technologies taken away multiple times.

Once I moved to my private school, the administration there were more adamant on keeping the classrooms technology free my first year and then rolled out a new learning plan that involved each student getting an iPad and having all of our classes on there accompanied by our homework.

Once I moved out of that private school an back into the Shakopee Public School system, my classrooms changed a whole lot. I saw students blatantly pull out their cell phones, watch FRIENDS on Netflix, and seemingly still pay attention. Well I think that is completely insane. I am a firm believer that you cannot have half of your attention to each thing. Even if you believe you can, I also am a huge advocate for giving each thing your best yes, but that is a topic for another time.

I did notice the reality of how true her statement was about once you put your attention on to your phone, it makes it so much harder to put your focus back into your school setting. Even with the “ability” to multitask, you will never be at your maximum capacity to learn.

Going back and forth from learning to technology, you give your less than average best to both and therefore are not gaining anything from either faucet(213).

I think that school should be an environment of learning, yet still have components of technology. I love that in this day and age, we can essentially do everything on a computer, but then we start to lose the very necessary skills of note taking. Yes, of course the pile of jobs we see now are based in technologies and our ability to use technology properly, however, you must also learn how to properly communicate your thoughts.

I have always written my notes until I got into my senior year. I recognized that even when I type, I get extremely side tracked so I eventually switched back into my trusted hand written notes and my primary source of note taking.