Technology is a double-edged sword. The internet has given access to so much knowledge but at the same time it has caused the youth of America to grow up too fast. I work as a substitute teacher and the things that I hear in the middle school are amazing. Students are talking about “adult” things that I am not completely sure I comprehended or knew about at the age of thirteen. I think that a lot of parents and teachers do not have the proper amount of knowledge about what their children are doing on the internet.
The age of social networking has created a larger venue for bullying. There have been several stories in the news about students “cyberbullying” and driving people to suicide. Teachers and parents have to work twice as hard to monitor the bullying problem because it is not happening directly in the school. My feelings on technology are that parental settings are a great invention that a lot of parents do not utilize. I think that parents and teachers have a responsibility to learn about what the kids are doing.
Technology… Good or Evil?
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Cyberbullying is a big problem. As a matter of fact, there have been school systems in which civil suits were brought against school faculty for ignoring the problems after a young lady committed suicide. There are computer programs such as PC Pandora computer monitering software and http://www.ancomm.com an anonymous text and online service where students can talk and report cyberbullying anonymously. Check them out!
Great point. Teachers (and parents) need to be taught what to teach and know what to look out for on the internet. Technology is our future though. Students are interested in it and it keeps them searching for more knowledge and they don’t even know they are learning most of the time.
There are great parental controls out there to prevent kids from getting to places that are dangerous or not appropriate. However, these controls can’t block everything and kids are smart and often know how to get around them.
In order for students to benefit the most from technology, it needs to be taught in the right way by someone (both teachers and parents) that will show them the educational benefits. Students can do many fun things that are 21st century technology related on the computer that will be educational at the same time as being fun. This is the great thing about technology today!
It’s hard for me to tell what is a change brought on by technology and what is simply a change in our society that technology may exacerbate or simply make more obvious. I usually see technology as an enzyme. It speeds up and facilitates things already going on.
The NY Times has an interesting article on cyberbullying that you might find interesting.