Has the new technology precluded students from learning in traditional settings and ways?

There was a time in the not too distant past when we were so unfamiliar with the new digital technology available to us that when referring someone to a web site, the entire URL would be printed or read aloud in an advertisement. Today, the bare essentials appear because "everyone knows" to enter http://www in order to visit the site--and many browser are so intuitive that all one needs to type is the essential information.

My point is that not only has the technology expanded at a pace that for many seems dizzying, but we have learned how to use that technology and, in many cases, have become dependent on it. And those who have been born in the last 20-years--the millennial generation as they have been dubbed by some--have grown up  having always known that the Internet existed, that email and text messages are as common as today as ashtrays  in restaurants and airplane seat armrests were in 1960. Times change and those who live through the change are aware of it, but those born into the change see it as just the way things are.

So what are the implications of the technological revolution of the 21st century? Will society be affected as much by it as the 19th and 20th centuries were by the industrial revolution? I suspect that this YouTube clip, may set the stage for some interesting considerations regarding this. Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkhpmEZWuRQ

Although apparently staged, the point this clip raises is nonetheless interesting…can today’s high school students “learn” from printed textbooks if they become frustrated by their dissimilarity with where they glean most of their information…the internet? Has the disconnect between electronic media and the (in student eyes) antiquated “hardcopy” print alternative become so great as to prejudice the student and affect his or her willingness to learn? And if the answer is yes, what are the implications of this reality for us as educators, remembering that today’s high school students are tomorrow’s under grads and graduate students? More to the point, whose responsibility is it to change…the students who need to “appreciate the value of printed information” and “realize that everything on the Internet cannot be trusted” or is the problem ours to address by revisiting our pedagogy, doing much the same as educators as we have been taught to do as counselors…meet the “client” where the client is?

Just a thought…what are yours?

To consider the impact of digital technology on eduction further, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Dr. Robert