Digital Minds: Intentional Implementation & Balance

“When we don’t practice different ways of thinking, we begin to lose [attentive modes of thought]” 

- Nicholas Carr

This week we took a look at a Prezi on technology and how it affects our learning processes and habits. This is a personal interest of mine, as during my undergraduate studies I was part of a research team investigating students’ use of web tools like Google and Wikipedia, and it’s relationship with their epistemological development. And like one of the consequences the Prezi discusses, we were seeing that often students did not engage in critical thinking about content and its sources when searching for information.

So, technology – is it good or bad for you? This is not the question we should be asking ourselves. Rather, the better question to ask is how your attitudes and behaviors affect what you believe about technology being good or bad for you. Because the best part of technology is that it is changing – it will always have potential to do something better for our lives. However, we also need to have better control of how we use technology at school, at home, for work, etc.

So as teachers and well, human beings susceptible to idleness…

What are the necessary skills?  

We should be teaching students to think critically about the information they are receiving and who/what they are receiving it from, which is no different than what we require students now, but we should be actively applying this mode of thought and learning towards the things we see and read through technology.

What are reasonable expectations for our students and ourselves?

It is our own attitudes towards technology and behaviors in using technology that should be deemed “bad” or “good”. In the end, the most reasonable and logical expectations we should have for ourselves and our students is to monitor our own thinking and our own use of technology; we should never stop setting goals to develop our metacognitive skills.

How do we avoid the costs of a pervasive digital environment in the classroom in the presence of adaptive and instructional technology? How do we prepare students with good strategies for using technology in their “outside” lives? What about in your professional practice?

We must keep our behaviors in check and use the technology in a way that will most benefit us as learners. As teachers, we need to directly instruct our students in their own habits and use of technology as a tool for learning, and model the most beneficial way to use technology in our daily lives.