Digital Nation

Wow. There were a lot of angles in this video on the influences of multitasking, the influence of technology on your life career, how technology can add years to a life, and how to teach using technology. When I first started watching the video, the topic was multitasking and the students at MIT, how they are the smartest and the most wired students in the nation right now. There was a test given to the students who were the most severe multitaskers. They showed only a few clips, but even with those clips, I realized that I am a terrible multitasker! This makes me think that my students better not be multitasked because they won't benefit as much. However, the video also discussed how students of today's age are natives to technology compared to the adults of today, who would be considered the immigrants. Technology is second nature to them. No one knows what the effects of a lot of technology will be yet; for example, look at how long it took for everyone to realize that smoking is bad for us, but who knows? Multitasking with technology could prove beneficial.
Another aspect of the video was teaching with technology. One commentator said that using all of the technology has made the students' attention span very short. As soon as we have an urge, we need to fulfill that urge. He calls today's teaching "instant-gratification education." One student said a quote that makes me think: "Sometimes the teachers bore us so we go online.." We need to stop that quote right at "sometimes the teachers bore us.." If students are getting bored, we as teachers are doing something wrong. It was proven in the video that using internet can increase math scores and attendance, can lower violence, and can open the mind in new ways. Obviously this means that students have the capacity and desire to learn, so if students are saying they're bored so they go check Facebook, we need to change our tactics. Technology has proven facts that it can be beneficial to a student's learning experience, and in today's age, students will have to learn technology before graduating in order to have a decent career, so we need to learn technology and learn how to best teach while using technology and keeping the kids engaged. In South Korea, students as young as 6 know how to use the internet as well as what is appropriate on the internet. One commentator said that America might not be able to do this like the Koreans, but we can find our ways to use the internet for the right uses and to grasp its full potential.