Skip to main content

Be Bored





A question that I keep coming back to is how the varied integration of technology in schools may be adversely impacting students’ ability to focus on boring stuff. It is quite challenging to actually be bored for any extended periods of time now, as soon as there is nothing going on the smartphones come out to play and fingers start texting, playing games or scrolling through social media. Is this causing an adverse impact on creativity in kids? Technology has taken over making stuff up to keep ourselves occupied, imagination may be being stifled. In a classroom environment we’re always looking at trying new and novel things, but I feel like a lot of it may be “lets try that, lets try this” instead of sitting down with a particular perhaps not-so exciting tool and mastering it to a high level.

Sharing our information:
I’m interested to see what @AndrewMendosa, @SamHarris and @StevenPinker would think about this issue, being the most active and followed psychologists currently on Twitter across a variety of fields. Technology’s impact on our ability to think, create and imagine is a new frontier so there’s a lot of science to delve through. #Bebored #Technologyinschool #Summer2018IICTI

Reflection:
There’s a lot out there to read about the psychological impacts of being wired to devices all the time and unfortunately the jury is still out. It’s still relatively new technology, power tablets and smartphones haven’t actually been floating around in schools for all that long, less than a decade. Testing (albeit not always the most accurate indicator) and grades haven’t moved very much at all in the same time period, and Math scores have steadily decreased. Perhaps there are too many “good ideas” contributing to what ends up amounting to noise in school. I’m interested to see what the future looks like, are we more wired or less so?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Future Focused

This quote, along with “New technology is common, new thinking is rare.” – Sir Peter Blake, are two statements that are resoundingly true. We as educators are consistently looking to improve the quality of education that our students receive, whether through improvements in our pedagogy, access to better resources, or simply creating a learning environment with many diverse options to approaching learning. I feel as if there is a disconnect between how quickly society advances in the integration of technology in our daily lives and the curriculum being delivered in schools. Do specifics matter anymore? If a student knows how to find information, does memorizing specific facts still hold value? Are subjects such as history changing because the facts are less important compared to the ability to find that information on your own? I’m continually frustrated with how no technology curriculum exists for intermediate and younger students in the public board, and the vital content that shou...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Basics

Good Blog for Old Dogs (Teach ‘em New Tricks!) This blog can be found at https://alicekeeler.com/ and is filled with easy to follow posts and information about technology basics that have become core to effective student learning experiences in the Modern classroom. Keeler covers a variety of resources such as Google Classroom & Sites, social media tips and tricks, and very straightforward tools. She also includes a number of shortcuts and quality of life improvements in programs we already use that many people may not be aware of. Anything that helps us save time as educators without losing quality is a plus! Sharing the information: An easy to follow blog that introduces technology and its teaching applications is honestly best suited towards older (or experienced as some would put it!) teachers later in their careers who haven’t particularly kept up with new things and feel like they may have fallen behind. It can be difficult to get up to speed with how quickly thing...
Post a Comment
Read more