Learning, With New Technologies

 An interesting article by Levy, Nardick, Turner & McWatters in the recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education's Digital Campus talks about the stress technology imposes to students. Of course the standard story with learning is that you're doing your homework and at the same time surfing the Web searching for news you don't really care about, Skyping, MSNing, checking your mail, listening to music and, well, just hanging on Facebook. Maybe one should also add YouTubeing. In fact I'm doing it right now, multitasking I believe it is called, but you can call it time wasting if you prefer; and I must admit I was doing it every time while I was reading and critically assessing the articles for the assignments, doing tool experiences and all other stuff for the New Media course.

That's why in May I started to print out the articles, going to a cafe place and reading them there. To my surprise it took me astounding little time to read them. :o And somehow like I understood them better. The trouble was transfusing that to a digital written form. Once again I found myself multitasking. There's just no escape!

But that comes, like the authors of the article say, with being a member of the Net Generation. Many students today are in fact aware and are concerned with the role of new technologies in their lives. A study they conducted on 300 students at six colleges shows that students are aware of, and seemingly frustrated by, the amount of time they spend online. Many of them feel pressure and are stressed out. "I don't have a coping mechanism, there are so many things: e-mail, personal e-mail, texting, news." one of the students said.

And it's true, oh how it's true! Time management isn't a merit of the Net Generation. Especially considering the limitations of a 24 hour day and the amount of stuff you have to do. How can you not comment on a friend's photo, look up what's happening in Manchuria, or see a new You Tube sensation that everyone's talking about?

So is it all a waste of time? Not necessarily, as another Digital Campus article shows new technologies can lead to fascinating results. David Silver describes his experience with online education. In his course Green Media, about making media about making food, he asked his students to go Twitter and tweet and check their classmates' tweets about the course. He states three reasons for Twitter; first it's a public account and the larger Tweeter community has access to their work and the larger the potential readership is the better the student's works are; second, tweeting under their real names makes them more responsible for their work; and third it simplifies course management replacing classroom technologies.

The results of the class were, as Silver puts it, exciting. Not only were the students thrilled the openness of Twitter as a public network made ti possible for the project to reach and inspire audiences. That's how Katherine Harris from San Jose State University learned about this project and integrated it to her own class. An example how sharing and openness nature of the Net can be beneficial.

In the end it's simply a matter of the viewpoint. As with everything else so with learning technologies and online education. New possibilities make new threats, but also new opportunities. Don't underestimate but don't also overestimate the Web, as in everyday life so in your learning environment, try to do your best. :)