Broken Brain Blog Numero Uno

The first blog here has already been an illuminating experience for me. At the end of our first class together, I was very excited and confident about the two topics that I was going to write about related to education. However, unfortunately, I completely forgot what I was going to write about. It is amazing what can happen and what can be forgotten in just a few days. At least this reconfirmed something that I have known for quite some time but still often forget and neglect to do, which is do WRITE THINGS DOWN. it is even more imperative to do this if you have something important to remember or at least what you perceive as important.

Since I have forgotten what I remembered as really great points to discuss, I will instead write about education and in the social media era and perhaps how my brain feels fried and melting considering everything else that I can barely manage to do anything or think properly, considering we are all this close to the end of the program, but I will do the best that I can.

Overall, it is my belief that social media, like any technology, is a tool, and can be a benefit or a hazard. Unfortunately, for humanity, the hazards end up being the most profitable. I feel that modern technology, specifically social media, is part of our instant gratification mindset, and has created a culture wherein if anything cannot be done instantly it cannot be done or is not worth doing at all. I have noticed this a lot, but even today, one of my elementary students was not willing to even just read the text of a test in order to complete it. Some may call it laziness, but I cannot blame at least some of them, because our modern day culture and technology makes everyone expect everything to happen and to be correct immediately. With that said, I feel much of our modern technology, including social media, aside with many of the negative effects that exist, is that it creates a short attention span, which therefore makes effective education very difficult. Despite my own personal predilections against integrating social media into the curriculum, it has become a major component of our society, for better or for worse, and I can only hope that it is utilized in an overall positive way. There is much more that I feel I could say about this and perhaps even how to use social media in a useful way, but it is not even lunch time and my brain already feels like it was crunched in a box. I hope that I will be able to go more in depth next time.