I have shared before what a love-hate relationship that I have with the internet and cell phones. I think that there are so many things that are wonderful about the internet and the way that we are able to learn so much at our fingertips, but there is also a lot of downsides.
When I was watching An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube by Michael Welsh, I found myself enjoying the way that he compared what he was sharing in comparison to the TV networks. His comparison between the 1.5 million hours of TV that one channel would put out within 60 years, and the fact that within 6 months in 2008, Youtube put out the same number of hours of content. This is already a kind of crazy amount of content to be put out, but I decided to do a little research on what it is today. Based on this article by Wyzowl, there is more than 500 hours of content uploaded every minute which means that there is 21,600,000 hours uploaded to Youtube every month. Which is insane!
I did a bit more research on this page and I learned that on average, people spend around 19 minutes a day on Youtube, and that Youtube is the second most searched for website, after Google. When I think about what is searched for most in my classroom, I think that Youtube would be second to Google Classroom. If students are working on the computer, they almost always want to have Youtube open in the background.
The way that people intake content has drastically increased. Often people are taking in content while working, learning, driving, or just going about their day to day activities. Personally when I think of when I am working independently in my classroom without the students, I am going to have either an audiobook or music playing while I work. Many of the students in our classrooms are the same way.
Plus when we think about the way that Snapchat and other social media has changed how people take in content, it changed things drastically. When I was in high school, Snapchat was the new app and people were just starting to use it. My friends and I would snap each other and use it to talk to each other, but we were able to put it away while at school and learn. But when I look at the students that I have in my classroom today, they are not able to put it away and have the self control. They are always needing to be keeping each other updated and many of them have shared with me that if they don’t respond immediately that they get anxiety and struggle to focus on their tasks. This is honestly a little scary to think about and I think that this is something that we will continue to learn more about in the coming years as we are changing and growing in education.
I think that the way that we think about technology and education is changing faster than we are able to keep up with the changes. This is a scary thought. Personally, I have always felt that I was a bit ahead of the rest because I was still young and I was using many of the social media sites that students were using. But now at the ripe old age of 26- ancient as the kids have told me- I am not keeping up with all the things that the kids are on so this can make it more challenging. I am finding that I have to keep myself updated on the slang by research and I need to actively go out of my way to learn more about what my students are doing online if I want to keep up. This is a struggle and I know that I won’t want to do it forever.
Thinking forward, I think that as educators, we are going to have to have a change about how we use cell phones and other technology in education because I don’t think that it is as easy as saying “NO CELLPHONES IN CLASS”