Living in a Digital Age

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You may have noticed recently that computers, tablets and mobile phones are becoming somewhat of a thing! And you may have noticed that my opening sentence here is somewhat of an understatement!

The world as we once knew it has dissolved, pixelated, if you will, in recent years. The manual, and often mundane, tasks we once performed, are quickly becoming automated and more enjoyable. Often times, our input into tasks is becoming either very limited, or completely redundant. Did you know that people (sometimes poilce officers, sometimes members of the public) were once paid to stand in the middle of intersections and direct traffic before the advent of automated traffic lights?

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There is no doubt that technology has benefited society in a myriad of ways, but there are inherent pitfalls that are encountered too. Before we explore these pros and cons, lets step back in time. Let's travel to a place where the air was fresher, the grass greener, and I was much younger...

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Do You Remember When...

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Do you remember your time at school? If you're like me, the memory is fading at a fairly rapid rate! I don't really recall a lot of my time at school, especially at primary school - high school is still quite a bit more vivid. For those early years, it's more of just a highlights reel that displays maybe five to ten of the most memorable events during that time (interestingly, one that has persisted was being able to buy 50 liquorice straps for 50c!).

Of the few recollections I have, I do remember the first time I was able to use a computer. It was a Commodore 64 and there were 24 of them in a heavily barred room that no one except for one teacher had access to. They were daisy-chained together and while they could boot independently of each other, they all relied on the single 5.5 inch floppy disk drive to run a program (we only ever played games - it was in primary school!).

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At the start of our computer lessons, we would charge to this heavily fortified room because if you were the first in line, it meant you were the first in the room, and if you were the first in the room, you were able to get to terminal 1.

What's so special about terminal 1 you might ask? Well, the way they were set up meant that you would select the program (game) you wanted to play from a list of available options, and then the drive would sytematically make its way around the computers, loading the selected game. The load process would take anywhere up to five minutes, which meant for those on terminal 24, a wait period of nearly the entire lesson was about to ensue.

And what were we waiting for graphics that were worse than the original Nintendo and games of the calibour of Pitstop and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

That's crazy, you might say, and by today's standard, it was. But for us, tucked away in little old Aldinga, South Australia, it was pure heaven. You might remember something similar - that long load time (I eventually saved enough money to buy my own Commodore 64, and this one only had the old tape deck which often took 20 minutes to load a game - how patient were we?!), the horrible graphics, and the utter joy that came with such an opportunity.

High school computing didn't improve much. There were better machines, but less games. The screens were monochramatic, blasting out an irridescent green that burnt itself into my retinas. The only program I remember using was a spreadsheet - I don't think it was excel back then. I remember it because we would sit in the class and once the program had loaded, press and hold the Enter key to try and find the bottom of the spreadsheet page. We never did find it. I'm not sure if that is because it was actually never ending (unlike the motion picture that came out a few years prior to this), or if it was because we were continually stopping to work when the teacher walked by.

My use of technology at school was vastly different to they way in which students make use of it today.

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Fast Forward To Now

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Students in a 21^st century classroom have an unprecidented access to technology. From laptops to tablets, mobile phones to virtual reality (@alvinauh wrote a good post on virtual reality in the classroom here), students are able to make use of technology like never before. You may not be aware, but the computing power that an average student has access to in their hands could have sent millions of Apollo 11's to the moon simultaneously.

Back in 2008, the Australian government, at the time, saw the benefits of technology in schools. They proposed a series of payments named the Digital Education Revolution (DER for short) that were designed to help schools bolster the number of devices they had, improve digital architecture for better communication and internet delivery, and to also offer training where required. As a result of this, schools across the country, public and private alike, were able to significantly improve, or in some remote cases, maybe even commence their digital footprint.

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The school I currently teach at has a 1 to 1 laptop program for students from years 7 to 12. While this is not necessarily a direct result of the DER, it would have acted as somewhat of a catalyst for this program. My point here is to highlight that we have gone from a school of 600-700-ish students in the '80s, having 24 shared computers, to most schools now being able to give every student private access to a laptop.

Our students can travel the world to experience the sights and sounds of another culture in a single lesson. They can interact with classes in different countires, having conversations in real-time, using chat or video. They have the world at their fingertips - all they need to do is imagine and type and they can find out all about the Peruvian jungle, or the Aztecs, or take virtual tours of the Louvre. In my day, it took a week for me to get a letter back from a business down the street!

The rich learning exeperiences we can develop for our students are unparalleled by previous generations. Sure, our parents (or grand parents for some of you spring chickens) got to watch the grainy gritty images of a moon landing, but they could not travel, with crystal clear imagery into a space station and experience (almost) first-hand what it is like to live there. In a second, our students can learn, not just from a book anymore, but from experince itself.

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Pitfalls

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But there is a darker side to this wide spread access to technology. Tech companies are slowly swallowing the pill of realisation that their inventions and innovations possibly/are becoming harmful to society, and more likely, individuals. Nomophobia was a term coined in 2010 that describes our fear of being out of contact with our mobile phone. In a research paper, written around the same time this word was established, titled Are mobile phones the 21^st century addiction?, the authors state that "mobile phones are the biggest non-drug addiction of the 21^st century". Less than seven years after this paper was released, I don't think we really need much convincing of this.

The developers of the world's two largest mobile phone operating systems, Google and Apple, are both focusing now on "digital health" Source. Google will roll out features with Android P, and Apple will be doing so with the impending release of iOS 12 - with the advent of data telling users how much time they are spending on their phones, and this for me is a foreboding problem with the technology students have access to.

While technology is a fantastic catalyst for learning in a digital world, how much is too much? Is the younger generation spending too much time on their devices, and not enough time interacting with other people?

Think briefly about how many sub-communities of the larger Steemit community have meetups. This is because while we chersih the supportive online community of the Steemit platform, we, as (predominantly) adults, also understand that there is intrinsic value in human interaction. Many of our younger students miss this, and find solace in the anonymity offered by their screen(s).

We should then probably be teaching balance. Offering young people the many benefits of living, and indeed, growing up in a digital environment, but at the same time, showing them that there is more to life than being in front of a screen.

Our students must be aware that the world can also be viewed through their eyes, and not just through the camera of the person closest to where they want to be - teach them that technology is a privilege rather than a right.

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The Wrap Up

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As I close, I would like to thank you for taking this brief journey with me. I love technology. I teach Information Techology, and as such, am immersed in it daily. I particularly love coding, and find value in students learning this skills, but I am also slightly fearful.

I'm fearful for the future of our students, and young people in general. I'm fearful that if the adults who have influence over them in their younger years don't teach them the pitfalls associated with thechnology, then they will never learn it and become slaves to nomophobia, alienated or worse.

I've only scraped the surface in regard to the danger of this technologically advanced age. I'm sure you are aware of many more too. The monsters lurking in the shadows of our screens are real and can be dangerous if not understood.

If you would like to unpack any of my musings further, I'm always open to discussion. Or if you have any insights, or anything further to add, again, I'm open to hearing from you. If you feel so led, please comment.

Thanks again for reading. Until next time...

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