Dr. Marina Milner-Bolotin

Today, as I was reading blogs of my students in the ETEC533 course, I noticed a recurring issue: schools ban the use of different technologies, various social web sites, etc. For example, as one of my students mentioned, his school doesn’t allow the students to use i-phones, i-pods, FB, etc. I keep thinking about it. My first reaction is not to limit the ban to schools. Why not to ban the use of laptops at conferences, so to prevent the participants to get distracted, to ban the use of cell phones in public transportation, where the rest of the passengers are forced to listen to conversations (sometimes very private) of other people they don’t want to listen to, to ban people from e-mailing everybody on their e-mail list very private messages without asking the recipients if they even want to get such an e-mail, and what about people who hit the “reply all button” and use professional e-mail lists to discuss private matters. In other words, there is no limit to misuse of technology, yet I think to ban it all WILL NOT BE A SOLUTION. In my view, THE solution will be to try and gradually develop societal norms of what is an appropriate use of technology and what isn’t. The same way, we in Canada (at least in Vancouver) have social norms that tell us not to throw garbage on a street, even though we have to look for a garbage can. This is part of our culture – to respect our environment and to respect everybody’s right to live in a clean and beautiful country. May be we should think of the same thing with respect to technology. We have to teach our students and ourselves to use it respectfully. If we do that, we will not need to ban it, yet we will be able to benefit from amazing opportunities technology offers us. And FB like many other social web sites is just a tool. We will not be able to ban our students from using it, as teachers and educators, we will need to teach them how to use it effectively and how to respect others while using it. What do you all think?