Digital Nation

Sheila McElroy

English 100F

Reading/Viewing Response #4

5-3-10

Rachel Dretzin, who directed and produced the “Digital Nation” video, interviews professors, doctors, teachers, students, gamers and military personnel, from all levels of education and geographic regions to get their opinions and findings regarding how the new technology has or is affecting us. They all have differing opinions on how we are being affected. Some believe that it is detrimental to students learning by allowing them to have laptops in the classroom, because they use it to email, check facebook or go onto the Internet instead of paying attention in class. Others believe that it needs to be taught in school as it is a necessary tool for the future. But what they have in common is that we need to learn how to control technology and not let the technology control us.

Mark Bauerlein, author of “The Dumbest generation” describes how technology has decreased students reading and writing skills. He says that about 6% of students come into class prepared. Technology has become such a distraction that students now write in paragraphs instead of essay form. One student acknowledged that he would write one a paragraph, get sidetracked with email, write another great paragraph, get sidetracked and write another. When he looked back at his paper, the paragraphs do not go together. But then, Jason Levy, principal of I.S. 335 High School in South Bronx, New York, claims that since he took over the school four years ago, students are excelling in school. Attendance is way up and so are the Math scores. His idea was to bring technology to each student by giving laptops to all the students to learn on and to do their homework.

Education is not the only area affected. Phillip Rosedale, creator of “2nd Life”, which is a virtual world where you create yourself in any image and are able to communicate with each other. He says it brings people together, you feel connected, instead of feeling isolated as with IM’ing and email. Businesses can use it to have a meeting for when you can’t all be in the same place at the same time. Gamers use a variety of it when they play online. The military is also using a version of virtual reality. They are training pilots to fly drones that are being used in warfare. The pilots can be here in the United States and flying drones anywhere in the world. For the military, this is an advancement this will keep our soldiers out of harm’s way.

Basically, Dretzin is not agreeing or disagreeing with any of the points being made in this video. She, herself, waffles between what she thinks is harmful and helpful for kids these days. But, she also understands that things are not going back to the way it was. Technology is here to stay and all of us need to get a better understanding of how to handle it. I don’t think this video has brought anything new to the table regarding technology and its effect on us. I think that we all live with some form of technology “addiction”, we’re human, and we all want to be connected. When my two oldest kids were growing up, they were limited to where could go because I had no way to keep in contact with them. With my two youngest kids, they were able to do more, they were more independent, because they had cell phones and I could keep in contact with them. I am thrilled with the new technologies of today; we just need to make it work for us and not against us.