Raise your hand if you need instant gratification...

I want to start off this post by responding to a few comments that were made on my last post regarding kids and technology. A lot of good points were made about how kids seem to need instant gratification and questions were raised about the long-term affects of this addiction that we all seem to have.  I suppose what I’m first concerned with is students inability to see long-term and look at the consequences of their actions, how many stories are we seeing of young girls that don’t think twice before sending an inappropriate photo to a guy at school. They don’t think about what kind of impact it will have on them when that boy forwards the photo to all his friends. The same goes for cyber-bullying. Kids can’t see the affects and the hurt that they cause when they say something via text or IM (is that still a thing?) like they can when they’re face-to-face. I can guarantee calling someone weird, ugly, or fat to someone’s face is way less likely to happen than saying it in some sort of chat room (also probably not a thing anymore but you get what I mean.)

Second, I want to address another comment made that asks why our generation is beginning to reject technology and move in the opposite direction. It’s already come up in our class, with the idea of using typewriters instead of computers. Have we begun to see the negative effects of technology and are now attempting to reverse this change, or are we just nostalgic for that slower pace of life in which you don’t care what Joe Shmoe did last night and how awesome the picture of his lunch is? Is there a way that these two extremes can be blended so we understand the value of each? Can this balance be taught to our students or is the balance between a slower pace and technology just knowledge that comes with time and experience (and realizing the next day that maybe you shouldn’t have put that picture of you doing a keg stand up on facebook for all your coworkers to see.) 

OK, now that I’ve been ranting about all the negatives of the tech world I want to talk about how awesome the website I researched for next class is. I know, I know, I’m constantly contradicting myself, but isn’t that part of life? Anyway, the site that I’ve been playing around on and figuring out how to navigate is Gooru, and it’s pretty awesome. I’ll be honest, when I first got this assignment I was not the happiest camper in class, but after going on the site and fiddling around I’m pretty pleased.

So the site basically lets you sign-up up so you can save all of your searches and then lets you search for all different information and lesson plans for whatever topic you plan on teaching. It’s kind of like pinterest in that you can save anything that you see and like into different “folders” for different classes. That way all of the information and different ideas and activities for class are stored in one place for that class. You can have different folders for each different class. It gets better, you can share the folders you’ve created with other teachers or students or whomever. It actually reminded me of the technology that the guest teacher that came to speak to us in Shari’s class was using. You can also set it up so students have access to assignments and material. I’m not going to go into much more detail since we’ll all get a chance to talk about it on Monday.

I’ll end with a quick though on how beneficial technology can be when used for collaboration, organization, and really used for education. These can be helpful tools that allow us to continue to learn and work together, when we’re mature enough to use them that way.