Eureka! I Found a New Species of Child!!

We live in a day and age where new and faster things are being invented everyday. Products are constantly being updated and upgraded. Now there are 101 ways to watch your favorite sport team or news channel. The education realm is also widely influenced by the advances of technology. Neil Postman brings some reality in on our virtual reality. Scientist say that the way of learning will be forever changed for the better by new and improved technologies. "If little Eva cannot sleep, she can learn algebra instead. At her home-learning station, she will tune in to a series of interesting problems that are presented in an interactive medium, much like video games," quotes Postman. He continues on by making fun of the idea that if a child can't sleep, she would much rather learn algebra. At first I was taken in by this argument. It does sound pretty ridiculous. But in today's discussion it dawned on me. Ding! What is fallible about this idea is not that the likelihood of a child in the middle of the night wanting an algebra lesson, it's the fact that it's true. But it's not true for those reasons. It's true because kids today are all about interactive media. Watching TV, playing video games, instant messaging, computer games, they are all very attractive to young minds. My sister would get in trouble for playing on the computer too long. But what games was she playing? Not the regular computer games, but the educational games. If a TV is on in a room, where are people's attention? It will be toward the TV. Our minds have been trained to intently focus on the technology. That argument that should be made is whether or not we want little Eva to be watching interactive Algebra videos at night. Has anyone heard of a warm glass of milk, some cookies, and a good book? Postman does come to this argument later on when he talks about how we need to teach our children not how to operate technology, but how technology is operating us.

So is technology a bad thing? No. Technology is very good, it makes things easier and faster. But we need a balance, especially in education. There needs to be a line where we are not consumed and completely dependent on technology. Technology is a tool, not the education itself. How do we learn? I always thought that we learned through our senses, the sense of touch, taste, sound, site, and smell. How do you smell and picture of a flower on a computer? How do you know what it feels like? Tastes like? Sounds like? Scientists would answer that they could have virtual reality flower. This makes me laugh because is it really reality? It's an altered reality, one where you can control what it looks like and what the components are that make it up. So in that sense, we are deceiving our kids in showing them a false reality. Why would it be so hard to go to a garden and pick a flower? It would certainly cost less. Heck.... it's FREE.