Mechanization: before, after, and what about our future?
I believe that humans are generally very social beings. While some people of course shy away from social interactions, I believe it is important for us to develop and maintain our ability to interact with others in a face-to-face, social (or oral) setting. While we are able to both share and document our ideas through a wide variety of written/online technologies today, I do not like the fact that Social Media is at times now taking the place of social (oral) communication. In the past, the development of technologies around written communication, for example, the printing press, actually encouraged oral communication and collaboration. People were brought together by these newly printed materials to discuss new ideas they had read and new theories they were developing. In The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Elizabeth Eisenstein discusses the fact that, with the development of the printing press, professionals who had never collaborated before began to work together. Along with this, students were independent of their teachers and could develop their own ideas and could delve more deeply into their specific interests (Eisenstein, 1979). Today, while I certainly see the merit of online communication, I would argue that there are many negatives seen as well. Cyber-bullying is a significant problem in an online environment. Bullying in some form has always been a part of society; however, I believe that it is easier to make negative and hateful statements to someone through a computer screen than it is to make those statements face-to-face. Social media is also, in some cases, slowly taking away our ability to interact socially with one-another. Dr. O’Donnell points out in “From Papyrus to Cyberspace” that we now live in a world where we can create an online profile to connect virtually with people with similar interests, rather than having to meet and communicate with people face-to-face (Engell & O’Donnell, 1999).
While some societies in the world are still based on an oral culture or paper-based literate culture, we seem, in North America, to be heading toward a virtual culture. It is interesting to watch students today during a silent reading period in a classroom. During our silent reading time, which is only ten to fifteen minutes long to begin with, I see students fiddling with items in their desks, making faces at a classmate, or staring off into space. Similarly, I am finding students are struggling more and more with written output. During a paper-based writing period, students again struggle to maintain focus and to successfully transfer their thoughts to written form. In contrast, when we have a computer-based assignment, or even better, and iPad-based assignment, those same students who had little to no interest in the printed text and the process of reading and writing are suddenly more engaged and while they still interact with their peers during work time, the conversations are often, surprisingly, on-topic, or at least about ‘cool’ images they have found online that relate to the topic. The point being, that our world seems to be developing out of the printed book and into the virtual age. Walter Ong points out in Orality and Literacy that “(w)ithout writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but normally even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form. More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness.” (Ong, 1982). Reading plays an incredibly important role in the development of writing and spelling. I wonder how our brains and the brains of the younger generation are changing now as the flashing light, movement, and bright colours of computer and online programs are drawing our attention away from paper-based materials and toward anything electronically-based. How will collaboration and communication look 100 years from now?
I think of how much my students love oral stories told in class, or theatrical productions that visit our school. I see that their minds still want to communicate orally, but I am concerned that we are beginning to lose the oral connection, and even the written connection, which Ong has pointed out, has been so vitally important to mankind.
References:
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. (1979). The printing press as an agent of change. Cambridge [England]; New York [USA]: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from: https://books.google.ca/books?id=WUVdAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Engell, J. & J. O’Donnell. (1999). “From papyrus to cyberspace” [Radio broadcast]. Cambridge Forum. Retrieved from: https://connect.ubc.ca/bbcswebdav/pid-2913588-dt-content-rid-12927273_1/courses/CL.UBC.ETEC.540.64A.2015W1.63074/module01/papyrus-cycberspace.mp3
Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
It is kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? I have taught young adults recently out of high school that have a great deal of trouble putting thoughts down on paper, and, like your class, only become interested when assignments involve computer research or anything other than trying to compose something. And yet many of them were going into careers where they will have to compose things-letters, reports, etc.–and I sometimes despaired as to how they were going to function.
Hi Mary,
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I want to push back a little bit on the idea that social media is truly isolating us. I believe that print had about as much of an ability to isolate us; it is how we choose to utilize, react to, and share our thinking about the information that we consume through any media. Bolter (2001) states that: “Writing technologies are never external agents that invade and occupy the minds of their users. These technologies are natural or naturalized only in the sense that they are constituted by the interaction of physical materials and human practices” (10%). In this light, moderation is everything; people [both adults and kids] need to be able to self-regulate how much time they spend on a single type of media. If we’re always talking to others, we’re missing out on a world of information on the web or through printed books; likewise, if we’re always reading or consuming content, we may never know the joy of interactions with actual human beings.
In response to your comments about low student motivation for writing, I believe that students have grown up with a different understanding of ‘audience’ than we have. In a traditional classroom – the ones we grew up in – the teacher was the sole audience member who would experience the written work of the student. Today, students who have normalized the concepts of “likes”, “favourites”, or “+1”s through exposure to social media. The assignment of an isolated writing activity may not seem relevant or inspiring to the average student. In these cases, technology such as blogs or social media can be leveraged to provide opportunities for more authentic and interactive sharing between teacher, peers, community members, and even be open to the outside world (McGrail & Davis, 2011). Not only does the audience for a piece of student writing largely expand, but it provokes deeper thinking around the quality of the writing being posted.
I say these things with as much vindication as I do because many of the blessings I have in my life are due to connection through social media and blogging. Perhaps I am biased, as a part of a vivid and caring educational community on Twitter… I am actually marrying someone that I met through it!
References
Bolter, J. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, 2nd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Mcgrail, E., & Davis, A. (2011). The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 25(4), 415-437.
Hi Mary.
I too am a huge fan of having my students read (print) texts silently for a portion of their school day. I mourn the fact that so little of this takes place outside of organized silent reading blocks in the school day. This becomes even more troubling in the light of a claim by Unesco that, “the biggest single indicator of whether a child is going to thrive at school and in work is whether or not they read for pleasure” (Paton, 2012) Working as a teacher librarian, it was my greatest pleasure to hook students into reading for the first time. Putting the “right” book in a student’s hands, can be likened to Mr. Olivander selecting the “right” wand for young witches and wizards in Harry Potter – careful experimentation and selection can create a lasting and beautiful relationship.
Your post reminded me of a couple of an article that I read recently on the topic of diminishing attention spans. (SQUIRREL!)
In a May, 2015 article in the The Telegraph, Leon Watson discusses a study on human attention span, and reports that we now have attention spans shorter than that of goldfish. Where we had average attention spans of 12 seconds in the year 2000, we have now dropped to 8 seconds. Goldfish are believed to have an attention span of 9 seconds. (Akkoc, 2014) The study also claims that, “Canadians [who were tested] with more digital lifestyles (those who consume more media, are multi-screeners, social media enthusiasts, or earlier adopters of technology) struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed.” (Watson, 2015) An environment perhaps like classroom silent reading.
I believe the push back against diminishing attention spans, is opportunities for greater student engagement in student tasks, whether it is silent reading, writing tasks, or project-based learning. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know that I often come back to the principles of UDL (Universal Design for Learning). In its most recent form, the principles of UDL have moved “Provide Multiple Means of Engagement” to the first in it’s list of three guidelines. We often think that to truly engage students we need to compete with the “flashing light, movement, and bright colours of computer and online programs”, but engagement is so much more than that. The flashing lights, and colours of screens may have an edge in garnering student attention, but rarely sustains student attention. I don’t believe that we have to compete with technology in this way, rather we need to *teach* engagement, and provide opportunities to *practice* engagement. Consider the following points from, “Universal Design for Learning – Theory and Practice” (Mayer, Rose & Gordon, 2014)
“1. Provide options for recruiting interest: options that increase individual choice and autonomy; options that enhance relevance, value, and authenticity; options that reduce threats and distractions.
2. Provide options for sustaining effort and persistence: options that heighten salience of goals and objectives, options that vary levels of challenge and support, options that foster collaboration and communication, options that increase mastery-oriented feedback.
3. Provide options for self-regulation: options that guide personal goal-setting and expectations, options that scaffold coping skills and strategies, options that develop self-assessment and reflection.”
References:
Akkoc, R. (2014, July 1). Memory of A Goldfish? Actually Fish Can Recall Events 12 Days Ago. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Meyer, A., Rose, D., and Gordon, D. (2014) Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. Wakefield, Massachusetts: CAST Professional Publishing
Paton, G. (2012, July 20). Children with Short Attention Spans ‘Failing to Read Books’. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Watson, L. (2015, May 15). Humans Have Shorter Attention Spans Than Goldfish, Thanks to Smartphones. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk