Ed Tech Talk #3

Ed Tech Weekly #195

In this episode they talked about the use of tablets.  One of the hosts said that when it first came out it sounded better in words rather than in the use of it.  Meaning that it sounded like a great piece of technology but not so much if you just bought one and kept it around the house instead of a desk top or lap top.  It is great for a businessman or someone who is constantly on the go all the time.  They could use it on planes and anywhere you went with it being an easy carry along item.  The biggest downfall they said was that it was just a useless piece of machine if there was no service in the area, besides the fact that you can play Scrabble.  I feel that using a tablet in schools could be useful.  Students could stay connected and roam the school or other places in the area around school and still do research for a class.  I remember when I was in high school we had to do a project for our science where we needed to do some research on pond animals and plants.  Since our school lined a wooded park called Mine Falls we were able to go out into the park and check the river and pond for certain animals and plants.  A tablet would have been a great resource to have back then.  We could have taken pictures, typed in data, and really had a lot more fun than we did.  So in that sense a tablet would be a great tool to have access in the schools.  It would be a tool that would engage student’s interests and could help improve their grades by them working with the research right away instead of waiting for them to get to some sort of computer or other multimedia source.  I personally have not used a Tablet so I am just going with what I have heard on Edtechtalk.   

Digital Nation

While watching this video I caught myself doing what a lot of the students from M.I.T and Stanford were doing and that was multitasking.  I looked over some homework, checked some email,  and started to type this blog all while listening to the video in the background.  An interesting fact that was mentioned in this video was that “kids are spending more than 50 hours a week with digital media.”  To me that seems to be a very low number.  I see kids on their phones everywhere I go or are playing with a PSP in a car or even out to eat with family.          

            Another thing mentioned was that they feel that some kids are addicted to video games.  Is that really so bad?  I don’t think so.  I like video games but I am not addicted.  Is it better to be addicted to video games or an illegal drug?  A fact that was just stated was that people have actually died after a 50 hour online gaming marathon due to little to no food or drink.  I do believe that kids are addicted because I know many students at my school that go home and pretty much lock themselves into their room to play video games all night and sometimes into the early morning.  I have asked a bunch of kids before what they plan on doing during the summer and I would usually get play video games!  I would ask what else and they would say nothing else really.  That right there is an addiction. 

            When some kids were sent to a camp to help them get over their addiction I found that pretty amusing.  They go to this camp for two weeks and their cell phones are taken away from them and are left with no technology at all.  That right there will make kids want what they can’t have even more.  One kid that they interviewed said that all he did was think about games and leaving the camp.  The idea of the camp was good to get kids their childhoods back.  I was amazed that one kid was so proud of himself after he set up a pop up tent…..that is pretty easy to do and I was just shocked that he was so happy that he was able to do something physical instead of something that dealt with digital media. 

            The swimming with whales experiment was also interesting.  They used virtual reality video equipment and an image of themselves and put them together to show the kids that they were swimming with whales.  Weeks later about 50% of the kids thought that they really swam with whales.  That’s where video games and addiction can be scary…where kids do not know the difference between real life and the fake life that is on the video game.  Games such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty are both rated M so that “adults” are the only ones who should play these types of games.  Most kids know that these games are not real and that life in the real world is so different than life in the video game.  In a video game you get extra lives and shooting guns and stealing cars is ok and have no consequences because you hid from the cops for a few minutes but in real life there is no extra life and if you do shoot guns and steal cars the cops will not stop looking until they find you.

            This video was actually very interesting.  I enjoyed watching it and I found out things that I never knew.  The whole section on video games was big for me because I work with kids in a school where video games is their life.  They look forward to playing these games and not having to deal with other people face to face.  That type of behavior is something that we need to work on with our future by somehow getting today’s kids more active and less consumed by video games.