CONS Social Media can be a Distraction

These instructors maintain that tools like Facebook and Twitter divert students' attention away from what's happening in class and are ultimately disruptive to the learning process.

Cyberbullying

On the 20th anniversary of the first mobile phone text message...  How texting made history but ruined our language - and plenty of marriages!

On the 20th anniversary of the first mobile phone text message...  How texting made history but ruined our language - and plenty of marriages!

Texts have changed the way we write, obliterating conventional punctuations and replacing properly spelled words with abbreviations, initials and ‘emoticon’ smiley symbols

Online Collaboration Project – Frustrations

Yet, we all know that group work often leads to one student completing the project (or making all of the decisions) and the other group members contribute only passively.

While online courses work to engage students in discussion via blogging or message boards, they cannot replace the kind of thought necessary to discuss ideas face-to-face.  When classroom (actual, not virtual) discussions get going, the back and forth between teacher and students as well as student to student leads to many insights and the playing with ideas simply cannot be accurately mimicked in an online discussion

As you well know, technology can be a powerful tool for learning, and it can be the same for cheating. It can be used to inform, and to distort. It can boldly open new doors, while flinging open some that were perhaps best left closed; not every topic is appropriate for all age groups

Instant Research Ask anyone over the age of 50 with a PhD what it was like to get the information that they needed and they will generally begin to swear and discuss how young people these days have it so soft. They are not merely being curmudgeon-esque (well perhaps a few) but on the whole they have a point: nearly every fact is no more than a few taps of the keys from anyone, making the accretion of information, well, child’s play. What does this mean? It has been speculated that this will lead to a decline of respect for intellectuals, but that seems unlikely. Knowing how to search for something is merely the first step to real comprehension, which involves a deeper understanding and critical analysis. On the whole, intellectualism and its pursuits will always command respect

Things such as cheating are now simpler than ever, and I don’t mean writing on your hand. Your class is allowed to use a graphing calculator for the test? Write a program on it that contains all the formulas that you need and presto, you pass the test. Chance of being caught? Zero