With the world being dominated primarily by technology, we, as human beings, need to learn how to balance our lives, learning, and interactions with others with technology. There is no way to fully ‘escape’ the technological world, and therefore, we have to learn and grow with it.
Today in class, we watched a TedTalk by Sherry Turkle exploring the ‘Goldilocks Effect’ — “Not too close, not too far, just right.” She explores how we are letting technology take us places that we don’t want to go. The devices we allow into our lives, are changes not only what we do and how we do it, but who we are. We are having difficulty connecting in the present as people are not only trying to connect to the world that they are present to, but also want to connect to the digital world at the same time. Here lies the problem. Turke further on in her TedTalk tries to inspire people to take time for face to face conversations, actively listen to people with whom you are interacting with, and take time for quiet reflection. It is with ensuring you fulfill each of these prompts, that you are able to have balance between ‘real life’ interactions and ‘digital’ interactions (Sherry Turkle).
One could argue that this is the same within the classroom. With the push for technology to be integrated into today’s classrooms and educational experiences, it is important that the educator ensures that there is still a positive balance between technology and communicatory life skills. This balance is important to both teach and model within a classroom as it is a skill students are going to require in their futures, especially since there is no knowing what their lives will be like, technology wise, in the future!
References
Sherry Turkle (March 2012). Goldilocks effect, TedTalk. Long Beach, California. Retrieved from http://mdl4000.weebly.com/81-ds-reflect.html
All images retrieved from GoogleImages.