Technology's New Footprints

Recently I read an article entitled “Footprints in the Digital Age” by Will Richardson.  The article was about Internet usage by students and how much the web is influencing the younger generation of kids.  It also describes how educators need to be teaching students, in order for them to reach their full learning potential. The article begins with Richardson describing some of his fears about how much the web is involved in our daily lives and how little information is actually being absorbed.

I really enjoyed his line “Not that they won’t be able to use Google well, mind you, but that when a certain someone (read: admissions officer, employer, potential mate) enters “Tess Richardson” into the search line of the browser, what comes up will be less then impressive.” His statement makes me think about how we as kids are always warned about what we post on the internet and how it is so easy now a days for anyone to find you via social networks. In a way this is scary because someone you don’t even know can learn almost everything about you. It could also be a disadvantage to have personal information on the Internet because an employer could make a decision about you based on that information without ever meeting you.

Richardson writes about the challenges that educators face right now balancing easier access to information with helping kids learn.  He states that educators are helping students “create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Internet.” He describes this new learning network as a “tectonic shift” in the way we need to think about the world and our place in it (Shirky,2008). This shift requires us to “create engaged learners, not simply knowers, and to reconsider the roles of schools and educators.” When I read this paragraph I immediately thought of the article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid” because the author of that article had similar ideas in how we as learners need to fully understand the material we are learning and not just complete assignments using easy to access information.

        According to the article the National School Boards Association took a survey in 2007 about the use of technology and found that of they 80% of students who used technology regularly - 70% of them used it for education related topics. I think that three years later these results are probably different because of the very popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  Internet usage has likely shifted from mostly education related topics to interacting with friends and communicating in a social manner.  I wonder..do people spend more time on Facebook than they do actually learning? I think that people have been able to learn how to multitask more efficiently. I really liked how Richardson said that we as students need to really push our thinking and try to understand what we are learning. I definitely do agree with him because we have access to so much information and it is so readily available that it is easy to become lazy in our approach.  Students today need to take the time they are saving on accessing the information and use it on studying the information so that it can be retained on a much deeper level.