Most students admitted to spending large amounts of time on social networking sites, including messaging friends who they'd previously spent all day at school with. In this class of 24 students, only 1 student in this class did not have their own personal facebook page. The majority of students in this class, also admitted to being distracted away from their school studies because of social media websites. If students are so reliant on this digital world, should it mean that schools and teachers should shift their classrooms to the virtual frontier?
Today's students seem to be so emerged in this digital world, that it would be difficult for them to imagine life without it. If the Internet suddenly disappeared, what would happen? How would this affect their academic studies? How would it affect their social interactions? Would life as they know it cease to exist?
As part of little classroom social experiment, I've asked my students to come to my blog and leave a comment based on this post ( hi guys!). So what I pose to my students within this virtual classroom environment is this:
Imagine that an electro-magnetic pulse hits Australia, and other countries around the world, as an act of terrorism. All electronic devices, including computers, smart phones, and the Internet, cease to work. How do you think this would affect your life, especially in the areas of socialising and education?As a teacher, it is often difficult to motivate and engage with students 'in real time' during a traditional classroom lesson. I believe this is related to this generations constant usage and reliance on the digital world. The very nature of the Internet is instantaneous, so these students are often expecting results to occur just as rapidly in 'real life'. So how do you motivate a student to study long term and set long term goals when they're use to receiving things NOW! Even the task of getting student to come to this blog is a mission, when their Internet browsers seem to know only four locations: Google, YouTube, facebook and Wikipedia.
Will your facebook account one day be more important than your drivers license or your birth certificate? Will people start to forget or never learn how to interact with each other outside the digital realm? Are we all bound to be like the humans that are depicted in the Pixar film Wall.E? Who will be left to write the content of Wikipedia and other information sources if future generations aren't taught to be inventive or think for themselves?
Thoughts?
Well honestly I think the world would crumble, without the use of technology and social media, people would not be able to communicate as frequently as they do. As we watched in the YouTube video today, people believe the information given to them from friends and social media sites rather than daily newspapers, magazines etc.
ReplyDeleteStudents and teachers use the internet and technology all the time for everyday usage, so our studies would decrease in that aspect... But students would not be distracted by the internet or social media at all, so our studies would most likely increase significantly.
They are my thoughts :) Jordan
It would be hard for people to communicate, it would take a lot longer for the message to get across. I feel a facebook page allows all forms of people to access who you are and what you like doing. It may be beneficial for some employers to find out the real side of you. But facebook could never replace your drivers licence or birth certificate, because your facebook can be altered. For example 13 year olds often say on facebook that they are born in 1985, wth??
ReplyDeleteKye
Tbh I think that if Internet, smart phones ect... Where all to not work people wouldn't be able to contact others as frequently as we do. Facebook allows us to keep in touch with friends/family all around the world and it doesn't cost us a cent! :)) school work would be harder to do because we wouldn't have the Internet at hand to easily search up a quick answer.if we didn't have internet we would have to find the time to travel to the local library and what I'd they didn't have what you needed :O that's why we need Internet! Haha. Although if we didn't have Facebook we would be focusing on school instead of what someone is doing?! And we would be more motivated to go out and see people instead of sitting on our butts doing nothing. But I think we would all die without it all :P :))
ReplyDeletewithout the use of technology such as facebook, smartphones etc. i personally think that the world would go into a mini depression, or large. there may also be a large suicide tenancy rate, from people going crazy. socialising would be different too. this is because most people are only social on FB, but pretty antisocial and shocking at communication skills.
ReplyDeletetbh if there was no internet, our school grades would probably drop, because students these days use the internet as a reference, instead of using other references such as books and newspapers etc.
just a thought, i think technology is changing our natural instincts too. for example, take the case of the little girl Sofia, and the lion at Wellington Zoo. Any normal person would have run away screaming, yet this little girl hardly even flinches... could this be because technology is changing the way we think?
Chloe
Everything happening in the world would become very difficult, technology is what brings people together in this day and age. People would start to panic, and they, as chloe said, would go into a 'mini depression'.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people rely on technology for every day to day activities, such as; school work - Typing up assignments, work - Computer filing, phones, internet, computers - Social. I dont think people realise how much we actually rely on technology.
Without technology, the world would be a very hard place to live in, because we have become so accustomed to living and comunicating with people around the world.
If all electronic devices, including computers, smart phones, and the Internet, ceased to work it wouldn’t affect our lives, it would give it back. We would get off our lazy rear ends and actually DO SOMETHING! Without the existence of facebook, we might actually get something done, we would finally learn how to socialise properly and meet new people the old fashioned way, face to face, and not by vertically stalking them to see if they tick all the right box’s.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of education, it would probably help out. We wouldn’t be distracted by social networking systems and sites and would pick up a book to learn something for once in our self absorbed lives. We take technology for granted, a few decades ago, people didn’t have half the technology we are faced with today, they lived perfectly happy lives, why couldn’t we? But the saddest thing is, we are never satisfied with what we’ve got, we always want more, we always want the most expensive piece of equipment that has all the bells and whistles and even then we are still not satisfied.
Kristen B