Documentary Blog

Questions for Thought:
1.  Compare and Contrast each documentary.  What was similar or different from the first one Digital Nation filmed in 2010 to Generation Like filmed in 2014 ?  

2.  Your thoughts on multitasking.  Do you agree?  Can you multitask?  Do you disagree with the video on the topic of multitasking? What do you think our students think about multitasking today?

3.  Is there an addiction happening in society today with technology or is it just a new way of living?   Should we be concerned?

4.  Do video games serve a purpose in education or are they a waste of time?
5.  How did what you watched in the two videos support your feelings about technology or how did it change your views?

6.  Are kids and adults today ruining their digital footprints by sharing too much information online without realizing that it may be detrimental to their future? Should they care?  Are they focused on too much of what others think?

7.  What do you feel are the dangers of technology use?  Are there any?

1. Those were two great documentaries, if I was going to share one video, I would have to give the edge to Digital Nation. Digital Nation was all encompassing. It touched on technology in education, personal life, and business. It left a lot of information out there for you to think about, pros and cons for each. I thought Generation Like was good, but it was more on the commercial side of technology, and impacts that social media can have on personal life outside of the classroom. It would be a great video to show students, about the affects it can have, both positive and negative.

2. I love when people bring up this topic of multi-tasking, because it is such a varied subject and people have all these weird thoughts and feelings about it. Here are a few of mine in bullet format

• in a work or school environment you can't do two things simultaneously that involve a thought process….you may be able to drink a glass of water and think about what you're going to do next but thats about it!
• among my co-workers I always felt that there were two types of personalities,  those who got aggravated when asked to put one thing down and do something else before the other task was completed, and those who had an "easygoing attitude" that could prioritize and move on.
• Whether you are the type that gets aggravated or not, it is definitely not faster to do try and share your time between two things. 
• but…….there is something to be said for people who use there time wisely. If there is any down time while doing one task, it is much more productive to work on another task that you can chip away at.

I'm not too involved in the classroom currently, so I don't know if when talking about multitasking students are referring to starting on their homework for one class while still in another class? or are students today talking about multitasking classwork and their personal life via cellphone use?? I used to do the first type all the time, and thought it was beneficial.  I don't think student athletes could handle the work load if they didn't. Like one student said in the video "if there were only 27 hours in the day, I could read Hamlet". This type of multitasking doesn't really take any type of technology to do though??  I think the social media part would lead back to digital citizenship and teaching students proper etiquette. 

3.  Technology can be addictive, the piece on video gaming in South Korea was kind of scary. Now I don't feel so bad when my kids play on the iPad for an hour or so. I feel that those are extreme circumstances though and gaming technology is no more dangerous than any of other vice out there.  I don't think we need to be too concerned, technology is just a new way of living. At least in my house current technology has just replaced older technology. Instead of junk t.v., its Facebook, games, and youtube! Instead of coloring on paper all the time its coloring of creating on the iPad. As long as limits are in place, and things are done in moderation everything will remain in balance.

4. Video games can be very educational. Even ones that don't seem educational, i.e. "first person shooters" like the ones in the interactive army recruitment stations, can teach problem solving skills and teamwork lessons. I would rather have my children playing a video game than watching certain cable television shows filled with commercials and pointless story lines.

6. I think that when certain social media sites first became popular, they may have been considered taboo. Companies may have looked at and used them to unfairly discipline their employees. Now those sites are so mainstream and companies realize how beneficial they can be to their bottom lines, I don't think the same stigma occurs. In fact they certain sites have become so important with professional networking, that if you don't have an account you may be frowned upon for not being tech savvy enough. That being said if your posting inappropriate things online its probably not the best choice, lets teach that Digital Citizenship.  

7. Technology of course has dangers, but everything in life does. Lets not be the person who stays inside all day because they're too scared to cross the street! We just need to be aware of them, talk about them, and plan for the best prevention possible. 

5. There was a couple segments in the documentaries that really intrigued me and made me stop contemplate a little longer.

The first was the comparison between the MIT professors in the beginning of the film who said students were falling behind because of technology. You had one of the professors saying that if the students had been listening to his lecture and reading the assigned readings they should have no problems absorbing the material. Then compare that to when Marc Prensky of "Games2Train" is later describing how in todays educational sentence, the verbs should be staying constant it is the nouns that should be changing. It was once books/papers that were the nouns and now it is moving towards digital tools like video/podcast being the nouns. Are these MIT professors a sign of the "Old Style" just too stubborn to change or are they right??

The second, was how technology has somehow made the  students lose the ability to write fluidly. At one point in "Digital Nation" there are students sitting around all agreeing that professors had critiqued their papers for being to chopped up into very specific paragraphs.  I myself am sitting here trying to piece back together my notes that I was typing while watching the film, and trying to answer all the questions.  Its looking pretty choppy… Is it technology's fault? Is it a bad thing? At one point in the film a professor was saying that way back in world history before written words and books, storytelling was a strength of the people.  Then came written words, and the art of storytelling was lost(or maybe just not as good as it once was), people were able to write the stories down in books. Were books a bad thing? Has technology changed the way we write? I have always preferred science, maybe it just isn't a strength. 

One of the topics that I did not agree with completely was when the documentary started following the IBM workers and how they telecommuted and video conferenced everything. It seemed like they were completely happy with it and these virtual avatars enabled them to connect socially. They seemed to be complementing clothing choices and making jokes. I just don't think, in a business or educational setting, you can get the same thing from a virtual world as you can from a face to face setting. There are so many little nuances that when you're talking to someone in person you can pick up on. There is too many times to count, where I've been working with a co-worker or even talking to my kids where I've asked if they understand something and they say "yes", when all over their face I can see that it is really a "no". 

The last thing I would like to mention, just because it left me in awww, was the part about todays military and drone strikes. First a thank you to our military and the people that serve. The part about the soldier sitting in Arizona using a drone to drop a bomb in Afghanistan, then driving home to have dinner with his family an hour later. I guess I never knew or thought about it long enough, I always assumed that the drones were being controlled at some military base closer to the conflict area, by soldiers who were deployed and "in" a combat mental state all the time. To realize that mentally some soldiers are going from drone strikes to reading bed time stories in the same day…that just kind of made me stop a think.