The way Bauerlein continues to refer our generations as revolutionaries makes me think that I should start looking behind myself while sitting at a computer and thinking about taking cover. But I guess that would actually be what Bauerlein is suggesting is going to happen to the bibliophiles of the world when us technophiles begin to take over.
My thoughts from chapter 3 are very jumbly and all over the place, so I'll try to find some sense of flow and just go for it.
-On page 75, Bauerline shows his disdain that children ranging from six months to six years of age spent an average of one hour and 58 minutes using screen media. If this weren't enough, he goes on to say that they are only spending 39 minutes with books. My question is, those children who were spending this amount of time with screen media, what were they doing? Were they watching/using education programs? If so, is that really so bad? Also, with the disproportionate reading time, one has to realize that many of these kids probably can't read too many books on their own and while parents should read to their kids, I think of book reading as a prenap/prebedtime activity, which might just add up to 39 minutes a day.
-Twice, on page 79 and on page 82 Bauerline mentions statistics about the amount of technological equipment used in an average week and about the amount of students who claim an intense attachment to their cell phones and admit to having a profile on an SNS. By the time he makes his point that all of this time being spent and this dependency is bad, I've completely forgotten what he was talking about. Again, it seems like he may be throwing numbers in just for importance sake.
- Bauerline's observes on page 98 that the amount of books in a library is decreasing and libraries may soon become what he calls multimedia information centers. My question about this is; are there less books because they are only stocking one copy of a general where they may have previously stocked several because copies are available electronically? If this is so, is it really bad to save a tree or two, since we honestly would probably just look it up online anyway.
-With Bauerline's comment about the Apple's back-to-school campaign on page 97, I couldn't help but notice he failed to refer to Apple's laptops as Macbooks, which is what they were called. I think that Apple was just using a creative play on words to sell their products, not suggesting that standard books were obsolete. Thoughts?
-Also, while Bauerline quotes the ACT's National Curriculum Survey as saying the 35% of college teachers said that most students are less ready for college than in previous years, I again question if this is due to the outpouring of technology. As we have discussed previously in class, I think this is more due to the constant preparation for standardized tests and the 5 paragraph standard essay that is drilled into our heads.
While it is a bit alarming that while IQ scores continue to rise, there is no translation over into knowledge, test scores and grades I think we again need to think about what all goes into measuring intelligence. As we enter this new age of technophilia, does our definition of intelligence need to change as well?
Comments (1)
Rachel,
I totally agree with you on the comment about students not being ready for college. I feel like people recently put the blame on technology but in reality many factors may contribute to this. Like we have often talked about in class, more students are going to college now than ever before. The application poll is thus getting larger, the number of people taking tests is getting greater, and the number of people attending college is higher. Like you have said, students are being prepared to take tests to get into college, not allowing them to think critically on their own. This issue, in my opinion, has little to do with the amount of books we are reading ect.
Posted by Maggie Bodenlos | April 8, 2009 11:42 PM
Posted on April 8, 2009 23:42