Technological reality

In terms of responsibility with technological world I don’t think it’s like necessarily the school’s responsibility but also realistically I know that most likely the school is going to have to deal with it and educate young people even though it shouldn’t be totally on schools and teachers to do that. I also have some what a bit of experience with this because it was a very sheltered child, and I wasn’t on social media and neither were my parents. My parents were anti-social media for most of my childhood so they always took pictures of me, but they never put them online and so and I was raised with the mentality that social media and technology was bad, and I didn’t have any education on it, mostly because then didn’t know much about it themselves so they couldn’t really educate me on it. I didn’t have social media and I never had a phone until I was 15. The only information I had about technology was what my teachers in high school taught me.

It’s also interesting to me that a lot of teachers try to avoid technology and they won’t use it in the classroom. They don’t want to use it and they don’t want to get involved in trying to figure it out, which is a fair perspective, however there are good things that come with technology like really helpful websites and visuals that you just cannot duplicate by hand. I think just getting technology involved in little ways is good to begin with and then teaching students how to how to decipher between fact and fiction is also key.

In Sherry Turkle’s Ted talk she talks a lot about being connected online yet being disconnected, the idea of seeming like you should be connected, and you should feel connected, but you don’t. Feeling lonely even though you are talking to people. Just because you’re talking to someone online doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be connected to them. I know in my personal experience especially through this pandemic I found that having to talk to people through either FaceTime or texting just isn’t the same as talking to them face to face it isn’t the same as having a conversation when you’re both right there especially with my friends, we tend to not be on our phones when we are together except for maybe a couple minutes but we will always be very present (pre-covid, that is) when we’re together and since I haven’t been able to see anyone it’s been hard because I’m relying on social media to keep me connected and it hasn’t been the same. As much as technology and social media tries to mimic the feeling of being connected with someone it’s just not the same as being face to face and being present. it is difficult to stay connected to people because you do feel really lonely when you aren’t able to see anyone. The example she gives in the Ted talk with her daughter and her friends in the picture of them being together but while being on their phones that was really interesting example because that’s oftentimes what happens. You see it more often now than ever, people avoid actually talking to each other and looking at each other and having a conversation, that’s something that has been a big issue in the last few years. I think the key with that with dealing with this is a balance, you have to balance the online time and offline time and recognize that when you’re with people you should at least try to not be online and scrolling through your phone.