Friday, June 19, 2009
Thing #12
To be perfectly honest, I am very hesitant to blog and twitter. I know I am old school, but I am sort of worried about how technology is in so many ways "dumbing down" America. People walking around with hands-free headsets gabbling on and broadcasting all of their personal drama, destroying the ambience of restaurants, movies, and even their kids ballgames; teens texting a mile a minute in their pockets while you are trying to talk to them or teach them or just have a family meal; people endlessly blogging, twittering, e-mailing when they are supposed to be working so that you can't get anything out of them when you need it; I just feel we are headed for a future when no one actually DOES anything of importance because they are too focused on the minutiae of their lives. Would Marie Curie have discovered radium if she was blogging 8 hours a day, or Stephen Hawking discover the Theory of Everything if he had to twitter about what he had for breakfast and who he saw at Walmart? I am all for dialoguing and sharing ideas and information about things that matter, but what small percentage of what is blogged and texted and twittered really makes the world go around? The government has no need to develop Big Brother - we have handed over every detail of our existence to the public on a silver platter. OK, that rant being over, I did pick out five blog sites to post a comment on, keeping in mind all of the tips given in this exercise. I will keep checking back to try to establish a dialogue. The two blogging pointers that I thought were important were (1) that blogging is casting a vote on the importance of an issue (some people seem to think that Gov. Perry's hairdo is an important issue) and (2) it is important to teach kids how to comment appropriately. I have been trying to encourage teachers to let kids blog in lieu of or in addition to their traditional written journaling. In searching for new blog sites, two particularly drew my attention. The first one was http://dodgeintrepid.blogspot.com/2009/06/death-mountain-crusaders-episode-501.html. This one has a radio serial for podcast, with the explorer Dodge Intrepid. In this particular episode, he and a librarian and library aide are trying to establish a library in a tiny African village. The second one was http://www.unshelved.com/blog.aspx?post=734. They have an Unshelved magazine, and in particular they sponsor a library cart decorating contest every year, and some of the past winners are a hoot!! Everyone should check them out.
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You made some very cogent points about the misuse of technology. At church Sunday, I was pleased to see a teen with his head bowed in prayer. Closer up, I could see he was hunched over his cell phone, texting throughout the service!
ReplyDeleteThough there is much to recommend various applications and tools, a negative thing I see developing because of the abbreviated text and superficial responses to blogs, twitters, Face Book, etc. is that it is even more difficult to get kids to expand their creative writing. Students tell me they have little free time to read, which would impact their writing positively. Free reading time is taken with keeping up with their online social networking, where touching base seems to be more important than the quality of the message.
as with anything, there are abusers and wrong reasons for using things, but the power of the online world is just that...powerful.
ReplyDeleteLook at world events of the past week or so that were exposed becasue of cell phones and blogging and tweeting, etc. I even think back to Ike lst fall and how we were better able to share info and keep up with each other because of these tools.
yes we all have worked to do to show young people how better to use them...and even those of us who are suppose to know better!
using TV as an analogy...What I have particiapted in over the years because of TV is priceless...I would not have been able to go to the moon, visited the South pole, mourned with my nation during the funeral of ayoung president or helped to rebuild the heart and soul of our country after 911 without TV access...and we all know the junk that is there for the taking as well, the junk I choose to ignore.
And I hope you keep fighting the battle of giving kids the option/opportunity to journal online vs paper...how better to share their efforts with even a larger audience.
Thanks for the responses! The situation in Iran being reported by cell phones and Twitter is a good argument - but it is just like Wikipedia - can you rely on it? It is opinion and not necessarily unbiased. The other drawback to texting etc. is that spelling is going to you know where - kids can't spell anything any more and don't care - one student told me learning spelling is a complete waste of time because they can just use spellcheck. When I said what about when you are writing, they looked at me as if I had suggested riding a dinosaur to school and said nobody writes anything any more!
ReplyDeleteI love your original comments. What ever happened to decorum, common sense, and remembering not to share everything?
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