Kindergarten Students to Receive iPads

 

 

Schools in Indiana plan to give kindergarten students iPads for educational purposes. Although, this technology investment is predicted to cost the school thousands, they believe this will benefit their youngest students.

Giving kindergarten students iPads is not the answer for preparing a child for the world. At a young age, a child needs to learn things such as human interaction, distinction between truth and fiction and getting along with others, not how to use a touch screen.

There have been many of studies on how the "screen" can led to many social/societal concerns that are RARELY noticed. As suggested by a recent Pew research, young people who use technology could become "intellectual lightweights." Students at a very young age are now learning how to become easily distracted, inflicted by instant gratification and one's who lack deep thinking skills.

Pew Research on technology and young people's brain http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/pew-survey-technology-brain_n_1308602.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Report on kindergarten students receiving iPads http://www.wsbt.com/news/wxin-school-will-give-kindergarten-students-ipads-20120227,0,7947115.column

Nomophobia. Rational or Irrational Fear?

A term coined by Neil Postman technopoly can be defined as [society's] submission of all forms of cultural life to the power of technique and technology. Evidence of technopoly is nomophobia, which is a fear of being without a phone/cell phone service.

I remember being a kid when there were no cell phones. I had a pager, which at that time was the most modern technology. With this pager, I was only slightly connected to the world at all times. I could receive a page, but if I were without a telephone then I could not return the page.

Nowadays, this is not the case. We are constantly connected to the world via cell phones, smart phones, computer devices (iPad, tablet, netbook), and the one and only World Wide Web. Some may argue that is a good thing that benefits society. However, I am not one of those people. The technology overload of the 21st century includes a few concerns, especially if you include the word "modernity" in the discussion.

First, the social aspects of life or being ignored or even becoming obsolete, because of the Web and how we communicate to each other. Face-to-face human interactive is a thing of the past, because with the Web and mobile devices we, as society, are able to communicate (or ignore communication) at our earliest convenience. Second, we are now beginning to filter our daily news. This could mean a variety of things such as filter in the news that you want to hear/know and filtering out the news you could care less about, or filtering any news you encounter by only reading the headline/the first two lines of a news story. These are only a couple of concerns that come along with a society who is fully devoted to technology and the list goes on.

I once heard a quote from Neil Postman that went something like "we have to become worried when we become pets to our tools." Pet to our tools, eh, Neil? I agree! This new phobia, nomophobia, explains that we have become pets to our tools. My question now is, does society see this as a consequence or a concern?

More information on nomophobia http://vator.tv/news/2012-02-16-irrational-fear-of-being-phoneless-on-the-rise

Media Conglormates and Agenda Setting Revisited

The correlation between media conglomerates and the agenda setting theory runs in a positive direction. Neil Postman slightly touches on this idea in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He mentions that we must be careful in how we access, analysis and evaluate the media's messages. And, if this goes unnoticed then there are some cultural concerns about how we think, act and feel. Have we, as a society, become native to the media and their messages?

A quote from Neil Postman in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death explains how influential TV is on our daily life....

          “Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical   point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)”

            "Television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged."

This could mean a number of different thing from staging the world of politics and how one politician must look, act, or sound in order to enter the White House to how the news is formatted to be short, sweet and non-serious giving the audience the idea that no news story is worthy for action because the problem is too large or too far from home, and finally, to how the TV portrayals beauty for men and women to the extent that there is a mild plastic surgery epidemic happening now, especially on the West coast.

Media conglomerates and Agenda-setting theory are two very important ideas that need more attention from the public.

The media controls the message. And, we, the audience, must be smart enough to decipher the message for being true or false, or to research and reflect on the message in an effort to gain knowledge or to help the situation

It's up to us to challenge the world of mass media and the message they give us.

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