As an educator, I realize that technology can benefit us in many ways. For example, having a blackboard(introduced in the 1840s), which is now a whiteboard and a laptop (introduces in the 1970s/80s) to use are things that we take very for granted now but weren’t always tools that teachers had access to.

It is also important to consider how technology has changed the way we communicate with others and it can impact the relationships we have. Social media has made it a lot easier to connect with people far away but it can also distract us from those who are standing right in front of us. If we are buried in our phones, sometimes we forget to notice/realize what is going on right in front of our eyes.

In the lecture, it was interesting to see that people thought newspaper and headphones were making people antisocial. This is the same thing that is happening now with social media, the internet and cellphones.

Technology can impact children in the classroom because they may not be able to focus on their school work because of the distraction of their devices and social media. This is something that teachers have had to adapt to. We need to find a balance of how much technology children are exposed to each day.

Something that I have been thinking about a lot recently is that everything we are teaching children, can be learned on their devices. They can look up everything online. In fact, my grandparents recently had a discussion with me where they told me that they think there will be no jobs for teachers one day because all kids will stay home and teach themselves online. They said they hope they never have to see this happen in their lifetime. While I want to believe this is not going to be the case because of my career, I realize that it could be a reality one day in my lifetime.

Watching Wesch’s video made me realize just how long YouTube has been around. When I was born in 2000 it was starting to become a new form of community with global connection of new and unimaginable possibilities. This is when connecting with people all over the world started to be introduced. Technically, in knowing this, I have also realized that I have really grown up with social media and the internet since I was very young. I haven’t really known anything different. This is kind of scary and makes me wonder if I really could live without it. Some quotes that stood out to me in Welsch’s video were “Media mediate human relationships.” and “When media change, human relationships change.”

We also discussed how many young kids spend a lot of time on technology now a days. Things are only getting worse for their generation because they are getting introduced to screens at such a young age. It is taking away from their face to face experiences. They are spending less time communicating and less time outside in nature. This is scary!!

To see how far technology has come in such a short time really makes me realize how much more things will change in the future even in our lifetime.