Use more tech, not less

By Liza Porter

My 1950s generation was sold the same bill of goods as today’s kids—buy, buy buy. That will never change, since consumerism rules the world.

But now, the technology’s different. So different that many in my generation (and most of my parents’ generation) don’t know how to use it.

We’re moving from a print culture (thinking sequentially, “one block on top of another”) to a digital culture (thinking holistically, integrating more information at once, partnering, collaborating). It’s hard for us old folks to keep up. Our nervous systems haven’t adjusted.

Once a majority of the population began using the Internet, it changed the way people learn, the way the media and advertisers access us, and the way our children see the world.

But their brains can still think.

Many young people in my classes are interested and fully engaged. They’re not on Facebook and Twitter all day. They are involved in the world around them. Some even read newspapers.

Case in point: When the Tiger Woods story became “big news,” there were many exclamations of agreement in the Aztec Press class when one classmate said disgustedly: “That’s not news!”

I almost started clapping.

When there was talk of doing away with the paper version of the Aztec Press, my fellow staffers engaged in the discussion. These kids definitely know how to think logically, how to write coherent sentences and how to get their ideas across in creative ways.

It is also true that in another of my classes, there are only two people who actually discuss things with the instructor on a regular basis as he lectures—myself and one other student. We are both over 40.

There are one or two more traditional students (ages 18-20) in that class who will offer an opinion now and then. This has been true of many of my lecture-type classes since I came back to college in 2008. A few students get involved but most just sit, listening passively.

I tried to think of reasons why the kids won’t get involved in discussions. Are they afraid to be wrong? I remember feeling that way in high school and especially in my first attempts at college 30 years ago.

Is it because they’re ignorant? Did they learn nothing during their first 12 years of school? Are they in college only because their parents make them go?

Maybe they’re too busy texting friends or checking Facebook, hands on their phones under the table where the instructor can’t see them.

I had to ask one young man to stop texting because it distracted me from the lecture. He appeared quite chastened when I politely talked with him about it, maybe because I’m old enough to be his mother. I felt like applauding again!

The bottom line is probably that kids are bored by school because we are doing things the old way—with “pencils and books and teacher’s dirty looks,” to paraphrase an old nursery rhyme and Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” song of long ago.

Isn’t that exactly what our parents did? They insisted on doing it the old way, all the while complaining in a whiny voice: “I just don’t understand what is happening to our youth.”

If young people are so keen on using “new” media, then we must use new media to educate them. If books hold no interest (and are ultimately too expensive, as we all know), we need to find new ways of piquing their interest.

We need to teach with multi-media in every classroom.

Duke University gave 1,600 incoming freshmen iPods with coursework and other media on them. The first thing students did was download music, of course. But they also used the iPods to record lectures and download podcasts, and as portable hard drives to move research and other material from computer to computer for use in studying.

I’m not saying all colleges should buy all students iPods or transform themselves into one huge computer lab. I’m also not saying we should do away with books. God forbid that!

iTunes U is another solution. It has free audio and video—lectures, documentaries, radio interviews—from educational and other institutions around the world. College instructors can post and/or assign audio-visual material from iTunes U to their classes.

We’re the ones who invented a lot of the new media that distracts kids from learning. If we want to educate our young, the whole educational system needs to be converted.

We must teach in a method that draws young people’s attention and gets them interested in the world around them. Coherent thinking will follow.

Put another way: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

And this from someone who can’t imagine having text messaging on her phone and wouldn’t dream of Twittering!

Photo illustration by Gabi Pina

Porter is an Aztec Press senior reporter and copy editor.