Tech Teach Today and Tomorrow

I remember having a pager in high school… I thought I was so cool. My parents or friends would send you a page and you would have to find a payphone to call them! This app generation will never know the struggle of having to decipher a “text” received on a pager that was a string of numbers and you had to sit with a phone to figure out what was being said. I grew up without apps but now it’s hard to remember what it was like… they have over simplified life and at times have made us very lazy. Gardner and Davis said about young people and apps “they’ve come to think of the world as an ensemble of apps, to see their lives as a string of ordered apps, or perhaps, in many cases, a single, extended, cradle-to-grave app.”  This is troubling to me. I think of my own 11-year-old, her app usage, and what it will become as she gets bigger. I think all of her apps are games right now, she is too young for social media and I’m going to push that off as long as I can....

Net Smart was full of information. Some much information, I had a difficult time digesting it. It wasn’t all new information which was maybe one reason I had a hard time taking it in. I did appreciate the section in Chapter 5 when Rheingold gave us the 5 Literacies in a Nutshell. I have found myself referring back to this section frequently since reading Net Smart. I enjoyed how he broke down each literacy and gave suggestions and tips that were almost 1 liners. They were broken down and written in a way that anyone could understand, and everyone could take something away from it.  The 5 literacies are attention, crap detection, participation, collaboration, and net smarts. Rheingold also points out that these are not the only literacies but the literacies that he feels are the most important. Some take a ways for me were that attention can be taught and he gave a list of great ways to fine tune your crap detection. Several of the sites/tips he gave were new t...

An information diet is something that everyone can stand to work on. It’s never going to be perfect; you are never going to 100% succeed, and you are always going to have to make a consciences decision to work on it. Just like a real diet- if you decide to indulge in your own ways, all the work you have done is going to go by the wayside. Even now as I work through my grad school assignments and my daughter is at her dads, I find myself picking up my phone in between thoughts and looking through social media just because I can. I wonder how much quicker I could get through my assignments if I stopped this silly habit. I could if I wanted to but for whatever reason I choose not to. The amount of time we spend on our phones tends to impact the quality of time we spend with our families. We can all stand to be present in the moment and actively be there with our kids and spouses. How hurtful is it when you are trying to tell someone about your day, and they are on th...