Facing the Facebook Responce
Facing the Facebook “Response” I’ve realized technology is very helpful now days but in the classrooms it’s more distracting than anything else. As Michael J. Bugeja stated in “Facing the Facebook”, Academics assessing learning outcomes often discover that technology is as much a distraction in the classroom as a tool. I catch myself checking my phone in class every now and then but when I do I miss out on what the instructor is teaching.
Technology is a great tool for us to learn and gather information but when you put technology in the classroom it becomes more distracting than helpful. It isn’t rare to look around the classroom and see a few classmates on their cell phones, laptop or any other electronic device. Although instead of using technology to do research on the topic being discussed in class, most use it as a form of entertainment, which makes it hard to pay attention to the lecture being given by the instructor.
As Bugeja’s essay tells the readers, “Increasingly, however, our networks are being used to entertain members of “The Facebook Generation” who text- message during class, talk on their cell phones during labs, and listen to iPods rather than guest speakers in the wireless lecture hall”. I’ve had my own personal experience where technology distracted me from learning and taking the proper notes for a test. Instead of paying attention to the instructor, I was texting a girl I had just met while the instructor was lecturing.
That conversation made me miss out on the material that was going to be tested on. I ended up failing the test because I didn’t know what it was about. Not only does technology distract students, I’ve also witnessed a lot of my classmates fail the entire course because they got caught cheating on a test using their cell phones. As Bugeja said, “Professors and librarians encounter improper use of technology by students, and some of those cases go to judiciary officials who enforce the student code. ” Before taking any test my instructor would always tell everybody to turn off the phones.
I guess my friend didn’t have enough time to study for the final so he wrote a lot of the information given in class over the test in his phone. He forgot to put the phone on silent so when he received a text message it made a noise and the instructor heard. His phone got confiscated immediately and the instructor saw all the notes that he had wrote down. Not only did he fail the final for cheating he also failed the entire course. Now days if a student doesn’t use technology in class or isn’t involved in any social network sites, he or she may feel left out.
As Michael Tracey said “One student chirped: ‘Ask them how many use Facebook. ‘ I did. Every hand in the room went up. She then said: ‘Ask them how many used it today. ‘ I did. Every hand in the room went up. I was amazed. ” Searching for somebody on facebook is a lot easier now days then trying to look them up in a phone book. Everybody has a facebook so it’s pretty easy to find an old classmate. One time during lunch some friends and I were bringing up memories from high school and started wondering what happened to a particular person.
I decided to search for her on facebook and in less than 5 minutes I found her. Technology is very distracting but at the same time its also very helpful. Overall technology is a great tool for us to learn and gather information. Books teach you all there is to know about everything but lets say you have a specific question its a lot more convenient to go online and use a search engine such as Google to answer the question rather than reading an entire book. But when you put technology in a classroom it becomes more distracting than helpful.
