Well this is probably going to be my last post for a week as I am going on vacation and will not have access to a computer or the internet. So no need to worry about me if I am absent from the blogging world for a bit. I promise I am still breathing!
To be honest I wasn’t sure what to write about today. I read through my RSS feeds, like I have been doing on a daily basis now, and nothing really struck my interest. So, as I was sitting here thinking, and slightly freaking out, about what I am going to do without my computer for a week a question suddenly came to my mind: How dependent have a become on technology nowadays? Given, if I wasn’t right in the middle of taking this class online it would not be as big of a deal, but still I realized I rely quite heavily on my computer. It is my primary communication tool, whether it be through e-mail, msn, facebook, etc. There are only a select few who I phone anymore and I can’t even remember the last time I wrote a letter. How sad is that? I have become so reliant on e-mail that I don’t even write anymore. Given it is much quicker and more convenient, but still, handwriting is an art form. We teach letter writing in school, but will the kids ever use it? Should we be teaching e-mailing instead? Is there a future for handwriting or is it beginning to lose it’s purpose?
It is not only computers that I rely on anymore. As mentioned earlier, my cell phone is attached to my hip, I never leave without my digital camera, and I might go insane at work if I didn’t have my ipod to listen to music with. Just reading that last sentence only one word comes to mine: spoiled! Not a day goes by where I don’t use some piece of technology to make my life simpler. Granted, that is the bonus to new ideas and inventions, but at the same time are we forgetting about the importance of the little everyday things? For example, today I got a flat tire at work. I was blessed with a father who taught me how to change it. I also work with 10 guys who knew how to go about the process as well, and were more then willing to help. This got me thinking though, will today’s kids be to interested in video games, computers, the internet, etc to be taught those lessons? Will upcoming parents even know themselves how to change a tire, let alone teach their children.? Have we become so dependent on cell phones and companies like CAA that we don’t think that simple life lessons like that are important anymore?
Those were just my random passing thoughts throughout my day and hopefully gives you guys something to think about as well. Have a good week! Talk to you when I get back! :)
The one part that really struck me in your writing today was the idea about written letters dissapearing. I think that we have to work a little to teach children about the benefits of sending and receiving a letter, even if it is just so they can have to chance to feel how great it is to receive. My daughters preschool class had the parents write letters to send to their child at cschool and the class I worked in had the students ‘write/draw’ letters to send to a classmate. There is no reason this has to stop is there?
July 31, 2007 @ 11:07 pmDean also found this great site ( Easypost.ca ) for sending letters from the computer through the mail - that could be something to explore. There are so many great tools, including the written the word, so hopefully we can hold onto them. I too have not ‘written and mailed’ a letter in about a year but I do try to make sure i do at least once a year (seasonal mostly).
Gillian,
My wife is a postcard freak..makes sure we send postcards everywhere we go….I just use flickr but I know people like getting postcards in the mail too.
August 1, 2007 @ 12:49 amIt is funny we talked about this when I started taking my Ecomp 355 class. It is funny how peoples ideas change through out age groups. My brother and my brother in law (4years difference) can spend an entire day on the computer if no one interupted them. Where I am finding it hard to be on the computer as much as is required for this class. Different era, not really my brother in law is the same age as me. So I guess it has to do with how we were brought up and what we see as important. But it all so has to do with convinence. I agree it will be interesting to see what kids now adays will see as important and what they are or aren’t being taught because of our reliance on technology.
August 6, 2007 @ 6:36 pmWhat a great reflection! Really makes a person stop and think about our life. I agree letter writing is a lost art and I agree with Dean’s wife, sending post cards is wonderful. I love to get them to. So Dean - when are we getting our postcards from your trip?!?
August 7, 2007 @ 4:36 pmPatrick Lewis talked alot about writing and acutally using a pen and paper and it was acutally fun to do and for most children they love to draw and write and see things that we write for them. Living on a farm I have a mailbox down town in the post office and my daughter just loves to get the key and open the box, hoping for a letter or card in there for her. Grandma sends her stuff in the mail and I keep planning on it but forget, thats a horrible thing to say in public and it is very sad that we don’t send letters anymore. I still write to my brother in Colorado because he has no computer (see someone who is even worse than I) and I enjoy sending him letters. When I give an exam to a student I will take pen and paper and use my time to write him a letter. All my other friends have email and you are so right, it seems it is so much easier to send an email than even pick up the phone. Thinking about it, I rarely phone anyone except my friend Carrie who also does not have a computer. I do have some friends who only have a computer at work and one friend that does not have a cell phone, but that’s all.
I was also thinking about what we did before we had a cell phone that goes everywhere with us and I often think about all those radio waves or what ever they are passing through our bodies in this wireless age. How can that be healthy for us? Is that why cancer is on the rise? Scary thoughts.
I have considered very seriously disconnecting my phone line (dial up) just to see how depend upon it that I am, and I thought about shutting off my power for the summer months to try and live like my grandparents had to. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful experience if we as a class sometime took a trip back to 1820, no power, no tv, no cell, no computer and lived that way for 3 months. I would love to do that and it is high on my list of things to do one of these summers. Ah, see I even have it planned for the summer when I shut off my power because of the cold winters! Isn’t it just amazing how our ancestors lived in Saskatchewan without all we take for granted. And what about 65 years from now when the grade ones retire - as we watched in the short clip Dean has on the site for this week? What will the world be like then? In our wildest dreams we will never imagine what it will be like. If I was a betting girl though, I would bet there will be no schools as we know them today and no in the room teachers because who will have time for sitting down in school! Today we have SCN and online but 65 years from now - wow - that will be so obsolete and old fashioned, kids will not even have heard of an online class - that will be something their grandparents did back in the old days. And our cell phones - kids might have heard of a cell phone, wasn’t that something that grandma had? Kind of like the CD’s she used to listen to? Sixty - five years from now an MP3 player will be an antique in a museum that you guys and girls (now grandpa and grandpas) used to use!
Oh, and what about these huge cumbersome things that we look at on our desk and what is that thing with all those letters on it that people used to type on? Ask grandpa, he might know what that is in the museum in 2065. He said what? A keyboard?!? Never heard of it!