This book evoked much thinking on my part. The flattening of the world is both exciting and worrisome at the same time. I knew that there were such things as outsourcing and insourcing and companies basing their businesses overseas, but I had NO idea just to what extent it was happening. That a doctor in India could be reading your scan results, or a person in China completing your tax returns is mind boggling.
The possibilities are endless. The increase of what everyone can now accomplish and communicate is nothing short of miraculous. Gains in speed of nearly every job makes production skyrocket, but at what cost? With all the great and wonderful possibilities, come possibilities of more crime and terrorism. Stolen identities, all that technology in the hands of terrorists is a scary proposition. The fact that I can take a picture, download it and print it immediately is fun! Being able to call my husband to stop at the store on his way home -nice!! But are we becoming a society in which if response or gratification is not immediate - we cannot handle it and become bored and quit. A little part of me loved taking my film in and picking up the pictures and excitably going through them. Of course there was a lot of room for disappointment. Whole rolls of film exposed comes to mind.
I guess the bottom line is it is here and there is no denying it. Society (at least the old part) needs to come to grips and join in, but responsibly. Having a cellphone does not mean that manners need be ignored. We have to have a balance and slow down sometimes. If you are having dinner with a friend - pay attention to that friend. It's like I tell the kids, it's hard to watch TV or text and do a good job on your homework. What usually is a very good rule to follow is everything in moderation.
So what do we do as educators? I think number one, we use this technology to teach our students. I can go more in depth using technology. I can have them do more problems and more difficult problems, just by using a graphing calculator. I can have my students do their own presentations and present things on the smart board in ways I was never able to before. Our students are pros - why not take advantage of this. But a caveat that was mentioned in the latter part of the book quite often. We cannot show disregard to the basic skills that are needed. Reading, writing and arithmetic just have to be learned and then we can move on from there.
The other part of our jobs as educators, is that we need to teach the kids that responsibility part. We have got to teach them that just because it is on the internet, does not make it true. We have got to teach them how to sort through all that information and come up with their own hypothesis. A little etiquette training never hurt either and that can be done by modeling appropriate behavior.
With anything positive there is usually some negative. Our job is to deal with the negatives appropriately and teach our children how to use wisely but enhance the positives and enjoy the ride.
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