Week 2 Chapters 1 & 2

The book, The Connected Educator by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall, has opened up a whole new world for me.  I relate it to the feeling of earning my driver’s license when I was 16.    It was a new feeling of independence, freedom, and the chance to see the world on my own.  I wanted to drive the car whenever I could, even jumping at the opportunity to drive a short distance or run an errand that just the other day I would have balked at.  Do you remember that feeling when you used cruise control the first time or drove yourself to high school in the morning; forgoing the early wake-up call to catch the bus?   The more I immersed myself into the reading the more quickly I experienced a sense of urgency.  How could I share this with my colleagues at work?  Are my student’s really un-plugging when they come to school?   I need to learn this new literacy, and fast. 

As I scored myself on figure 1.2: Self-evaluation rubric for new literacies of the 21^st century on page I4-17, I quickly realized how far behind I was.  I began to wonder how this could have happened to me.  Why hadn’t I felt more comfortable with these new literacies and advances in technology?  As I continued to plug along at the assignments for week two I began to realize that it has a lot to do with the cost.  I watched that very interesting video on Karl Fish’s blog, Fischbowl.  Karl Fisch was interviewing Clay Christensen a professor at Harvard’s Business School.  During the video Professor Christensen spoke about the about the high cost of emerging technology eventually followed by a decrease in price as competitors introduce their versions.  (It was fascinating to hear from Professor Christensen, an opportunity that most certainly would have been missed.) I was able to correlate what he was saying directly to my pocketbook.  My husband and I simply choose not to buy the “latest and greatest” devices including cell phones and computers.  We know the price will eventually come down (We learned that the hard way).  Additionally, neither one of us were particularly fond of playing video games when we were younger, opting for the great outdoors instead.  Probably the most important reason was because both our mothers told us that if we sat and played those games our minds would turn to mush and we’d go blind.  So perhaps the idea that technology has been around now for 3 or 4 generations makes it that much easier for the younger generations to just use it because life has always been this way for them. 

I grapple with the ease at which people connect.  While I see the benefit of becoming a global learner, I wonder about the loss of people skills.  Are these technologies important for everyone?  I argue the point that you lose touch with the people who are right next to you.  You cannot infer emotion from text messages the way you can when you are looking in the eye of the person you are speaking to.  Many youth send message to the very people who are in the same room.  What about a handshake and old fashion hello?  What is the cost benefit of these emerging technologies?