Technology: Pros and Cons, still undecided, but learning to embrace it.

I have been reading the two assigned books for this class on an iPad. I have read other books on my iPad and I have read a couple of books on my computer as well. I don’t really like it. I realize there are some advantages to it; you can carry a lot of books without much weight, or the iPad takes up less storage space in your house (I have books everywhere in my house). I love the feel of holding a book and flipping through pages. I did get used to reading on the electronic devices, but I like going back to books. For textbooks I find the iPad even more challenging because even though I have found how you can bookmark pages, I like to write notes and highlight as I read as well (I know how to do this using my computer, but I have not figured it out on the iPad). In addition, I like to quickly flip through pages after I read reviewing what I marked and it is not the same experience to scroll through the pages on the iPad. I also like to see how many pages I have left in a chapter and it is again, harder to just flip through to see what there is left to read. That being said, I am sitting here, surrounded my cell phone, iPad and computer. I like technology and I do think many of my apprehensions will wane as time goes on, I am not so sure that my opinion on reading on the devises will though… I think about inventions over the past century and a half and how people must have felt when cars, TV, or microwaves were invented, and I can’t imagine life without them. This is how students of our generation feel about the internet and devices that literally put the world into their hands with the push of a few buttons. It is our job as educators then to put some of our personal feelings aside and look at the bigger picture; where will this technology be when we release our student to the world? We need to prepare them as best as possible and in this day in age, that means incorporating technology into our teaching.

In the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr talks about how our brain works in relation to outside stimuli. It describes some of the history in learning how our brain learns and how our neural pathways work. He talks about how our brains have plasticity so they can be rewired (on a side note: I found all of this information incredibly interesting and would like to look into some more of the research experiments he referenced).

One example he gives of how this works is technology.  He has found that he has more difficulty reading lengthy articles or getting lost in a book. He feels like he can’t concentrate for as long and he seems to blame it on the internet. Because the Internet is a quick way to get information and perform tasks that used to take much more time, he does not need to concentrate for as long on tasks. So he has rewired his brain in a way that makes it more difficult for him to concentrate long term on reading actual books or articles. Although he seems to think this is an affliction that many people suffer from, and it may be, I don’t feel that way. I can get lost in a good book. I may have more difficulty concentrating on articles or books that don’t hold as much interest to me, but I don’t feel that is because of the internet, I think it has always been that way for me; if a book holds less interest, it is more difficult to keep my mind on it. It is possible that although I did not grow up with quite as much technology that is available now, I have been around it in more of my younger years than him. Maybe I don’t see the problem as much because I am more used to technology? Maybe this means that our students don’t have this problem at all? Or maybe I am the outlier and he is the norm? Although Carr is an avid user of technology, he seems skeptical of the negative impact it may be having on our brains, and seems, thus far, uncertain of a conclusion on how he feels. On the other hand, Marc Prensky who wrote the Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom, has embraced technology.

Prensky writes, “But whether you are personally for or against modern digital technology (or have, as most of us do, a view somewhere in between), today’s technology is changing your mind- and all of our minds- for the better”. He thinks that technology is making us smarter, in a way that technology is an extension of our brain; he calls us “technology-enhanced humans”.

A piece of being able to embrace technology is about attitude. We need to have a positive attitude to utilize all of the benefits of technology. I appreciate how even though Prensky embraces technology, he recognizes that it can be good or bad depending on how it is used. He notes how there is a difference from an immediate gain that we get from technology from the wisdom, which can take longer to recognize because it is about how we choose to use our new technologies.

It seems to me when thinking about the past; almost all new technology that has been introduced has in some way, made our lives, as humans, easier. Have there been or are there drawbacks? Yes, but ultimately it has been for our bettering. Trying to keep this in mind helps with keeping in line with Prenskys opinion on how a positive attitude towards technology is important to embracing it and to gaining digital wisdom.

Carr, N. G. (2010). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton. (Kindle)

Prensky, M. (2012). Brain gain: Technology and the quest for digital wisdom. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (Kindle)