Response #4

4/5/10
The video ‘Frontline: Digital Nation’ produced and directed by Rachel Dretzin, discusses our new world of technological advances, and takes a closer look at the direction our digital nation is heading towards. Rachel Dretzin and correspondent Douglas Rushkoff, travel, interviewing people ranging from teachers, students, experts, and scientist in search for answers of how our digital nation is affecting us. The video varies from every day distractions which many students suffer from, to new ideas of engaging children in school, to harmful effects of internet addiction.

With more gadgets being produced, more and more people are willing to invest in the newest advances. With these new electronics, the more distractions seem to come our way. As studies have shown, M.I.T students are among the most intelligent yet wired people. Students are constantly multi-tasking, whether it is working on an essay, listening to music, while chatting and emailing friends. The NASA experiment presented in the video, examines several college students who are high chronic multi-taskers, working on 5 to 6 things at once. The experiment concluded people are significantly slower, distracted, and their memory is disorganized when constantly switching topics. Yet, surprisingly students believe they are great multi-taskers. As Clifford Nass, from NASA states, “We worry that it might be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.” Clifford Nass simply believes technology is taking away from us; with more distractions ever before, there is a rising concern of the new generations poor basic skills. Today, technology’s rapid speed makes many wonder which direction of teaching and learning will be corresponding to our schools. Rachel Dretzin views two sides of this dispute, one idea is to embrace the digital media, in hopes to keep students interest and engaged with their studies. This would mean students would actively learn through games and off the computer. Or are the ‘instant gratification education’ techniques, enabling student, and encouraging short attention span? This question leads to the thought of our generation being the dumbest generation. As author, Professor Mark Bauerlein of “Dumbest Generation” believes this generation is losing its basic skills in writing, and suggests we’re not as capable as we use to be before digital distraction. Students today are not writing an essay with a big idea, but instead writing a paragraph by paragraph, jotting down ideas that burst into their heads at that particular moment.

The time it took to write this summary, I was easily distracted by messages on Facebook, text messages from my friends, emails, and music. Digital Nation opened my eyes towards how technology personally affected me. It is interesting to watch student just like myself, having the same thoughts and troubles in school. Technology is in fact affecting the way I think and able to process information. With all the electronics I have, there’s no need to remember phones numbers, short stories, e mail addresses, and directions. Although they are a distraction at times, everything I need appears to me with I simple touch of the finger. It might sound concerning, that the new generation has no need to remember information, but technology will only expand making our lives easier. When the time comes where technology has vanished, I believe that is when we should become concerned.