Too bad no one was paying attention, after all they were probably too busy on social network sites reporting that he was about to make a comment. All the while missing the big picture entirely. The result ultimately trickles down to the youth of today’s technological society in this global village we call Earth.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, made headlines and caused new heated debates across the province when he made some comments about technology in classrooms. To put it simply, he is in favour of having students being able to use cellphones in the classroom. The premier was quoted in a Toronto Star article stating, “Telephones and Blackberries and the like are conduits for information today […] and one of the things that we want our students to do is to be well informed. It is something we should be looking at in our schools.”
This comment lead to a flurry of reports and opinion pieces being published over the past day or so. Most of which condemn the idea of the use of cellphones in the classroom and rightfully so. As a teacher to be, here at Nipissing University, and only being a couple of years removed from high school, this idea seems to invoke more harm than good into the education system. Sure McGuinty has good intentions by seeing the positives that could come out of this, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and hell is exactly where the provinces educational system is heading if this comes to fruition. Students even now, when some schools have banned personal electronics altogether, are still caught texting under their desks. The idea to incorporate cellphones into classrooms just opens up more opportunities for students to be distracted.
There is no doubt that we are in an age of technology, and that technology is, and will continue to be at the heart of society. However, we are also in an age of socially inept people who would rather sit in front of a computer screen than have a conversation with a person. With that, as a society, we lose that emotional connect and human contact we need to survive as a proper functioning community. We become more like robots than humans as the social experience becomes more habitually faceless. I do not condemn technology and social networking and in fact I embrace its simplicity and ease of use but where do we draw the line and teach the new generations that there is a reason for paying attention to one thing at a time
McGuinty is obviously not in sync with many new educational studies that relate to multitasking and social networking. One such study basically states, that we are losing the ability to think critically and tend to produce a lower quality of work. A news report on this study can be found here. So while we are tempted to use the ease of technology to help students learn we are just classically enabling them, so they cannot think for themselves. Technology has a place in the classroom but has to be used quite sparingly and effectively in order to work properly.
Therefore, the Premier should get off his Blackberry once in awhile and look at the world around him. I bet he would be surprised to see what he has overlooked or missed while he was on his phone.
