Digital Divide - Sec 1

The Digital Divide: Section 1

"Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants"

This article written my Marc Prensky brings to light an important subject concerning our future generations.  Has our education system progressed in parallel with technology?  And the answer, in my opinion, is no.  And in combination with this main idea he also pushes for the answer of "how" does our instruction methodology and content need to be altered.  The fact that people born over the last 30 years have been subject to more technological advances than the previous generations is obvious.  Video games, texting, computers and the internet have all been tought to these "Digital Natives" from their childhoods.  Perhaps the most interesting question Prenskey presents is the difference between learing new stuff or learning old stuff in new ways.  I'm not sure as to where he gets his "facts" but if they are true (and it would make sense to me), that newer generations watch 20,000 hours of T.V., Play 10,000 hours of video games and yet have only read 5,000 hours.  Adaptation, change and progress are inevitable, however, literacy, mathematics and history will stay the same.  How we teach todays students is definitely outdated.  Perhaps the real question is how is this going to be dealt with and who is going to be held responsible.

"The Internet"

As I didn't find this article as interesting as the last, Stephen Johnson certainly makes some valid points.  His thesis is basically that the internet has challenged our minds by being participatory, forcing users to learn new interfaces and by creating new ways for socializing.  It is a certainty that millions (if not billions) of people use the internet.  Johnson's piece states that over 275,000 blogs entries are posted every day in America alone.  I for one use the internet to pay my bills, keep up with friends, read the news, and shop amongst other things.  I don't think Johnson is ignorant to the fact that people use the internet, I just think the article was written when people didn't know what was to come of this new tool.  Then comes his point that we are faced with different programs and interfaces that we must learn how to use, and supposedly this makes us smarter.  I'm not sure if I agree here, at least for the average internet user.  Most programs and applications have become streamlined and user-friendly; if you know how to use one you can usually easily figure out another.  And finally he touches on the social aspect of the web.  The heaviest hitter here is obviously Facebook, however, more and more romantic relationships are sparked by an online service.  The internet also brings smaller groups together, from all ends of the world through blogs and other online avenues helping to keep the "Antique Button Collectors Guild" and other modestly popular groups connected.

"Learning To Think In A Digital World"

With the amount of information today that can be so easily accessed can it, in fact, be easily digested as well?  Suggesting that people become "expert readers" before being immersed into the digital world is just what Maryanne Wolf would have us do.  The heart of her passage lies in historical context of prevailing forms of communications through out the years.  First she empoys an arguement of the great Socrates which basically says that simply being able to read doesn't mean that one will be able to absorb the material or intellectualize on the subject themselves, but rather to know instead of learn.  This could be very easy today as so much information could be easily taken for granted and merely digested than contemplated.  Then she moves on to neurosciences and how learning to read actually rewires our brain and helps us to think better and faster.  That's all well and good, but who's not to say there isn't another way to trigger the same brain function.  She even says there's not much research on the subject, so I say, more research is needed!  Finally she delves into Marcel Proust (who was also in the title of her book), and shortly and sweetly explains that we take the ideas from the authors of our readings and expand on them and investigate them further.  Well, I could have told you that!

"Is Google Making Us Stupid"

The saying goes "you learn something new everyday".  I in fact did learn something new today, that I may learn differently tomorrow.  This was perhaps my most interesting read of the day.  Nicholas Carr's theory is that the use of the internet and it's information could be (and probably is) changing the way we learn and think.  And perhaps not for the better.  He mentions the invention of the clock and that really got my attention.  Before the clock, people woke up with the roosters, worked until the job was done or the sun went down and all without relying on anything to tell them when to do so.  And after the clock, we have to be at work at a specific time, lunch, dinner, programs and our whole lives now revolve around the clock.  Before the internet we had to go to the library to research, call the theater for movie times, use family recipes, now, it's easy to find 20 mac and cheese recipes on Google, Fandango your theater and investigate any subject you could want with a few key strokes and a click or two of the mouse.  Carr does leave room for debate though mentioning that historically people had doubts concerning written word and further communincation technologies and they have worked out just fine.  Guess we'll just have to see.  My question would actually be, "Is Google Making Us Lazy".