When my parents were young...

What are some of the major differences between your lifestyle and that of your parents as teenagers? Research some of the facts, trends, and lifestyles of when your parents were adolescents. How would you feel if you had to, for one day, live in the age when your parents were your age? Which lifestyle would you prefer to live in and why?

My parents are from the baby boomer generation, so they were born a pretty long time ago. Their life as teenagers was completely different than mine. My mom grew up in Toronto / New York City and my dad grew up in South Africa. They were both very busy teenagers - they were always doing something. My mom's main interests were dancing and diving. She took dance lessons four to five times a week for hours at a time. She also participated in swimming and diving competitions. My dad had a ton of hobbies as well. He had his own dark room where he processed negatives, he started his own music entertainment business, he played soccer, and he worked at a camera shop (he sold more camera equipment than the older employees). If my parents weren’t doing extra-curricular activities, they were studying or helping their parents with chores around the house. There was rarely a time when they would get to “chill out”.


I don’t know if you’ve noticed already, but my parents participated in a lot of activities that did not involve advanced technology. A huge part of society today, technology, was not around back then. Sure they had the TV, the radio, the camera, and the phone but that was about it. If my parents wanted to contact a friend or a family member, they would have to pick up the phone, twist for the right numbers and actually talk to him/her. Sometimes they would even have to walk to their friend’s house and talk face to face, the horror! The worst was when they had to take out a piece of paper and write a letter. Now we can text, Facebook, or Tweet someone if we want to contact them. We can have immediate contact with almost any person in the entire world. When my parents were teenagers, communication was not so “instant” as it is today. Another difference between my parents’ childhood and mine was that information was not electronically accessed. If they had to write a book report, they couldn’t just go online and research, they would have to go the library and take notes with a pen or pencil. If you gave a 21^st century teenager the task of writing a report without any technology, they would find it very difficult. A survey showed that on average students spend one to two hours on social networking sites daily. My parents didn't even know what Facebook was three years ago, let alone when they were teenagers. Our lifestyles today are filled by technology, my parents’ lifestyles were not.

If I got the chance to live in the age of my parents for one day I would be thrilled. To see how my parents grew up and to meet all of my older relatives would be amazing. Seeing how teenagers could function without technology would be so interesting and liberating. I could definitely handle one day without my phone, my iPod, or my computer just for this experience. Even though I wouldn’t mind visiting my parents’ childhood for one day, I would not want to live there. I prefer to live in today’s society – a society thriving on technology. Technology allows for basic tasks and even complicated tasks to be done within an instant. Sure technology has its downfalls: the same survey showed that technology hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism, and disrupts classroom learning. However, if had to live in the past, where there was little technology, I would be devastated.

Multitasking? I don't think so.

Do you find multitasking effective or ineffective as whole? If you do find multitasking effective, how has it helped you finish your work (list experiences if possible)? If you find multitasking ineffective, what issues do you have with multitasking (list experiences if possible)? Why do you think people still multitask even though studies have shown that multitasking is ineffective? As a student, do you think teachers find multitasking effective? Why or why not?

Many studies have shown that multitasking is ineffective and that the brain can’t split its focus to juggle multiple tasks, why is this? Do you ever think that multitasking can be mastered? Why or why not? Be specific.

Multitasking. Oh how I hate that word. Even though I have been a culprit of this many times, I find multitasking completely ineffective. I understand how people may multitask on the computer, I have five tabs open right now. However, I have no idea how students can multi-task while studying or doing homework. There is no way that a student can be fully focused on their biology homework while Jay-Z is blasting in their room. The biggest problem with multitasking is the distraction aspect. I get distracted very easily; I cannot study with any noise in the background. The mind cannot absorb information as well when it’s trying to focus on ten things at once. Humans can simply focus on one thing at once, multitasking is just a delusion of the mind. I find that when I do multitask, I take longer to finish my work as a whole. Even if I am switching back and forth between Math and English, I find finishing one subject and then starting the other is much more effective.

People multitask because they get bored easily. No number of studies will be able to change this. For today’s teenager, staying on one task for a long period of time is very difficult. They constantly need to expose their mind to something new or they’ll get very bored and anxious. They only see the positive sides of studying, texting, eating, and watching TV all at the same time. Sure it may seem like they’re getting many things done at once but they are not paying full attention to any one task. In fact, multitasking causes people to waste a lot of time with useless tasks, such as watching a funny video on YouTube, instead of focusing on the main task at hand.

Teachers see students multitask all the time; they are even adapting their rules to the new era of multitasking. I remember back a few years ago when teachers discouraged students listening to music while doing in-class work. Nowadays, teachers don’t even mind when a student is listening to music during a lesson. I want to think teachers find multitasking ineffective, but their actions speak otherwise. Their allowance and even encouragement of multitasking in the classroom proves that they at least don’t think it’s ineffective. However, a lot of the older teachers are not in tune with the new generation of multitasking. This is probably because they didn't have all this technology to multitask with when they were younger. Whether a teacher is pro multitasking or not just boils down to their upbringing and their willingness to adapt to the changing society.

The fact that studies show that the brain just switches back and forth from one task to the other makes perfect sense. People who multitask are not actually texting with one hand and answering a math problem with the other at the same time. They are just rapidly switching back and forth from their textbook to their phone. As Dave Crenshaw likes to call it, they are "switch-tasking".  Scientific studies have shown that multitasking doesn’t actually exist, and for this reason I think that multitasking will never be mastered. How can something nonexistent be mastered? With practice, people can become better and faster at switching back and forth between multiple tasks. However, no one will be able to give their full attention to multiple things at once.

Teacher Placement...

Teacher's are always there to help students with whatever they need. However, students rarely get the chance to do the same for their teachers. The 'Teacher Placement' project for my IDC class, was a nice change. I was paired up with my friend Denise, and our job was to help teachers from the art department at Mackenzie. We were assigned to help Mr. Simpson and Ms. Scott, who both wanted completely different things. In breif, Mr. Simpson wanted to revamp his old website, and Ms. Scott wanted us to teach her students how to shoot, upload, and edit video.


Did you enjoy the experience? Why or why not?
Even though this project was a lot of work, I can truly say that I enjoyed it. For Ms. Scott's music class, I got to make a presentation on how to use iMovie. This was a really fun task for me since I know iMovie inside and out, I love shooting/editing videos, and I love presenting. I even enjoyed filming the Jing tutorials for the resource website that we created for her students. I thought that adding a video option for the music ISP was a great idea; I wish I would of have that option for some of my ISPs.
Mr. Simpson's website was also really enjoyable to make. Some of the work was quite tedious (like uploading and renaming all of his files), but the rest of it was quite fun. I really enjoyed making the headers on photoshop, as well as editing the HTML of the website theme. Overall, I enjoyed the experience of helping and working with teachers and would like to do it again.


What went well with your placement?
With this placement, thankfully the majority of things went well. The fact that I was comfortable with all the technology we were using to help the teachers, was really great. If I was placed with a teacher who wanted help with smartboards or clickers, I would have been just as lost as he/she would have been. Ms. Scott also had very strict deadlines, this worked very well since it forced Denise and I to do a lot of work in a very short period of time. This was a little stressful, but deadlines prevent these placement plans from being dragged on and on. The presentation that we made for the music students also went very smoothly. Even though what we were teaching was basic, the students seemed very interested in using iMovie and WMM. Mr. Simpson's placement plan also went well; once we found him a website platform everything was really straight forward.


What difficulties did you have with your placement?
As great as this placement was, there were some difficulties along the way. The major difficulty was finding Mr. Simpson a website platform that met all of his expectations. He was already using a Google sites, however for an art teacher, it's just not the best option. The themes are boring/restricting, there is no photo/video gallery option, and there is a maximum for file downloads/uploads. At first, Denise and I were thinking of making Mr. Simpson multiple websites. One for announcements and files, one for photos to display student work, as well as links to Google Docs for files that went over the maximum capacity. Even though this solved all the problems, I thought that this was just ridiculous, there has got to be something out there that combines everything Mr. Simpson needs into one website! I was determined to find a better (and free) option! I spent a couple of days vigorously searching and finally came across the perfect solution, Weebly Education. No maximum capacity for files, no cost, no ads, no restrictions. Perfect.
There were also a couple of minor difficulties along the way. One being, uploading our Jing tutorials onto the resource website for the music students (of course we used a Weebly website). Weebly allows you to upload Flash files directly onto  the website, which was perfect since our Jing videos were Flash files. However, the files were too big to upload! In order to get our tutorials onto the website, we had to upload them onto the Jing website and then embed the HTML of the videos onto our resource website. This worked, but the videos were so large they got cropped. Then we had to figure out how to edit the HTML in order to make the videos the right size. Did I mention that we had to film, edit, and upload these Jing tutorials onto our resource website over one weekend!


Do you consider your placement a success?
Even though this placement took quite some time, I do believe that is was a success. Mr. Simpson and Ms. Scott are technologically advanced, but they are just so busy. What we did for them was a big help. Everything for Ms. Scott's placement went according to plan, we presented to her class on how to use iMovie/WMM and even made a website full of resources. We gave her everything she asked her and more. Mr. Simpson's website is not quite finished since he has been too busy to give us all his files/photos/announcements. However, we are going to meet with him (when he has time) to teach him how to use and update his new website. He's going to start using the website for second semester, I would consider the website a partially finished success. Overall, both teachers were very pleased with what we did for them.


Do you think the project is useful/has value for IDC students/teachers/students of placement teachers?
This project is definitely useful for both the teachers and students. Teachers get to incorporate more technology into their classrooms, and their students get to experience this new technology. The placement allows for the somewhat technologically behind teachers to start to embrace technology, which is a great thing since this is wear our society is headed. This project also has value for IDC students since they get to actually teach teachers for once instead of the other way round.


How could the project be improved for future IDC classes?
I was lucky enough to be working with technology that I was very familiar with. However, some classmates were not so lucky. Students are very fast learners with technology but having to learn the technology before teaching it wastes a lot of time. In order to prevent this, IDC students should at least know how to use each technology tool before starting the teacher placement. In addition to becoming an expert with one piece of technology, they should know a thing or two about everything else. This is more of a way to improve the 'technology project', but doing this will improve the 'placement plan project'.

Digital Nation Reaction

Technology is everywhere and advancing fast. In my household alone, there are 2 digital cameras, three televisions, four desktop computers, five laptops, six cellphones (most of which are smart phones), six ipods, and seven gaming devices. All of these items are used on a daily basis and some are even used for multiple hours a day. As with everyone in my household, my eyes just move from one screen to next. Our society today is completely surrounded by technology, but is this really a good thing? Will the impact of technology on our society be beneficial or detrimental?

First of all, lets start with how technology is beneficial to society. Technology gives people the ability to contact others and complete tasks easily and quickly. If I want to ask someone a question, I have the option of emailing, texting, facebook messaging, or tweeting them. If I was really adamant, I could do all four. It doesn't matter where that person lives, my message will get to them within seconds. Not only is technology great for fast communication, it also improves teaching and how students learn. In the Digital Nation documentary, adding technology into a school's classrooms improved the overall behaviour of the students. There was less fighting among fellow classmates and the students actually became excited to learn.

That was just a quick glimpse at how technology is actually improving society. Now lets take a look at the scarier side of things...

Technology may seem great but it can be quite detrimental, especially for the people who cannot control their usage. In my opinion the most harmful parts of technology are the video games. This is because video games can be very addictive to children and even some adults. In china there are video gaming cafes where children can play video games all day long. Multiple children have died in these cafes from playing the games for hours straight. Even though the result of death is only in extreme cases, playing video games still results in other unwanted side effects. As seen in the Digital Nation documentary, one child was so addicted to video games it was hard to get him to stop playing even just to eat dinner. Not to mention that ever since he started playing these games, his grades slipped significantly. The boy's mother even said that she feels as if she has lost her connection with her son. Excessive video game playing is just one of the many ways in which technology is harmful to our society today.

Technology is also detrimental to our society today because it results in a great loss of face to face interaction. All these electronic devices create a very convenient and fast way of communicating with others. However texting someone is just not the same as talking to them in person. In the Digital Nation documentary, there was a woman who had meetings with her co-workers through an online community where each person has their own avatar. They do business with each other but they have never met in person. Also in the documentary, a lot of adults participate in these online video games where they can interact with other players. They even consider the other players good friends even though they have never met in person. Even though these two examples are not necessarily harmful, they just go to show that the amount of face to face communication is decreasing. Technology is replacing normal human contact with cyberspace contact. Our society is losing a very big part of what it means to be human.

If it is not clear already, I am a technology pessimist. Even though I love my laptop, phone, and ipod dearly, I feel as though I'm trapped in technology. I don't necessarily think that the use of technology should be stopped, I just think that the usage should be controlled. Technology is creeping into every aspect of life and we have to stop it before it turns us into a completely different race. We must control technology, technology should not be controlling us.

Most Effective Teaching Strategies...

I am definitely a visual learner. I find it very effective when teachers have visual aids to assist with their lessons. I find that I am not as focused when a teacher is just blabbing on and on without anything for the students to look at besides the teacher. However some teachers are exceptional at engaging a class without any technology/visual aid, but those teachers are few and far apart.

The classes that I remember the most are the ones where the learning was more interactive and less 'lecture like'. I think a teacher should have a balance between lecture lessons, interactive activities, and stories about their own life/childhood. I always seem to remember every single detail of a teacher's childhood story, but for the life of me I can't remember a single thing from the lesson they taught.

The main key in teaching teachers is to be patient! They haven't been exposed to technology their whole lives like the average teenager has. It is also a good idea to have a steady teaching pace. Don't just spit everything out at once and expect the teacher to understand. Also don't teach at a snail's pace, teachers will catch on sooner then you think. It is definitely important to actually show how to use certain pieces of technology; not just tell the teacher what to do and leave.