As I was preparing for class, When Libraries Get Social: How Tech-Savvy Teens Are Shaping Library Culture really caught my attention and made me stop and think. The school I work in does not allow students to bring laptop computers to class, I-pods and cell phones must be kept in lockers throughout the day, social networking sites and blogs are blocked, and they are not allowed to check email. (They are not even issued a school email account for educational purposes.) The quote by Linda stone in the Teen Reality # 3 slide, “Multi-tasking is a way of life – and people live in a state of continuous partial attention”, puts it all in perspective.
Educators are preparing students for their future. Many students will go on to college and others will join the workforce. Obviously I took the college route. As a teacher I spend my day taking attendance, constantly checking email for names of students that need to go to the office, finding the correct Smart Board files, entering grades, and making sure video clips are loaded! I do all of this while I am teaching a lesson and monitoring 25 students, and most importantly it is all done on the computer. My husband, on the other hand, tried college; it didn’t work out, and then he went on to the workforce. He now works for a company that makes plastic. His first six weeks were spent training in a conference room, mostly behind a computer. The funny thing is…..he is not training for an office job. He will be working in the packaging part of the plant, mainly filling hoppers and moving them with an engine. Even though this is a factory/production job that doesn’t require a college education, he still has to have the ability to multi-task and utilize technology. Logging in the hours he worked, checking email, keeping up with safety guidelines, and computing the amount of plastic that has been loaded for shipment are all aspects of his job and using the computer on a daily basis.
Are we really preparing students for their future? Whether they go on to the workforce immediately after graduation or go to college first, they are destined to be required to multi-task using technology.
When I arrived to work after 10 days off for spring break, my computer was out of commission. Next year all of the computers in the building will be replaced, but for now we are dealing with sporadic hard drive crashes. I was the latest victim! It was one of the worst days I have ever had at work. I felt completely lost without my computer for only one day. Although I didn’t have my computer, I could listen to my I-pod, use my cell phone, and go to the library to check my email and this class blog (only because they unblocked it for me) if I wanted to during my prep period. I couldn’t live a day without just my computer at work, and yet we are asking our students to live without all of their gadgets everyday.
I realize we have to have some guidelines or it would be complete chaos. I have been very persistent in suggesting that students should at least have school email accounts. There are many times I create a lesson, worksheet, etc. at home and email it to my school account so I can access it at work. I am sure you are all thinking – why doesn’t she just use a flash drive? I forgot to mention we can’t use those either! Email accounts would at least give students the freedom to pull up a project or assignment to present or print. As of right now they would have to email it to a teacher in order to access it at school.
This is just an example of one school that has forbidden students to be tech-savvy during school hours unless it is confined to a specific lesson that a teacher has created for students to showcase their multimedia talents. And in a school that only has one main computer lab outside of the two computer classrooms, it has to be a lesson that is prepared and scheduled at least a month in advance! We are asking our students to live outside of reality while they are at school. They have grown up in an era of multi-tasking using various forms of media and now we are asking them to give their full attention to science, math, language, and history without technology at their fingertips. It doesn’t seem realistic.
3 comments:
Amy, you make an excellent point. I remember reading a brief article in SLJ about this issue 2 or so years ago. We are really doing kids a disservice by severely limiting their interaction with technology in school.
I'm curious to know why even flash drives aren't allowed at your school? I can only assume this is some sort of attempt to prevent viruses? Whatever the reason, from an outsider, it seems utterly ridiculous that students have no way to get their work from home to school and back again. Are they supposed to use floppy disks, or what? (Most computers don't even have floppy drives any more, so I hope that's not the option.) I can only imagine how frustrated these students must feel.
Janet - Yes, it is a virus issue. In order for a student to get their work from home to school they must email it to a teacher. That is why I think they should be allowed to maintain a school email account.
The email issue is a hot one at our school. Students are banned from using email and are encouraged to use a jump drive for all document transfers. Teachers are having fits about the amount of students who are emailing files to them because they already receive more email than they can keep up with on a daily basis.
This year we subscribed to NoodleTools to help students keep track of the sources they use during research and to create electronic notecards. The beauty of this software is that students can access this from home and school. This got me thinking about whether there are any Internet sites that would allow a student to save a document so they could access it then at school. Does Google documents allow a user to do this?
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