It seems lately these gadgets have become so commonplace that people are starting to talk about "digital-detox vacation packages" Interaction via some technological interface has become so common that human interaction, social skills and quality time with family and friends need some work in our lives. We need Unplugging every once in a while. The actual date for this digital detox was Friday, March 23rd... I ask any of you reading this post, did you participate? I bet not. "Turn off your cell phone. Stop the constant emailing, texting, tweeting and Facebooking to take time to notice the world around you. Connect with loved ones. Nurture your health. Get outside. Find silence. Avoid commerce. Give back. Eat Together. " eeww I missed it too; probably, I was reading or posting something related to this course, LOL.
The numbers are mind boggling; in a country like the U.S 95% of teens are online, 76% use social networking sites and 77% have cell phones. Of the slightly older age group (18-29 year olds), 96% are Internet users, 84% use social networks and 97% have cell phones. More than half of those users have smartphones and 23% own tablets such as the iPad. This era should be called "the hyperconnectivity era". Seriously, there are advantages and many of them, but do we know the cons? What are some to immediate consequences of always being connected and getting tons of information at a touch of a key? Sure optimists will say digital tools will accelerate intelligence, and should lead to an increase in problem solving. And indeed these tools can be empowering. They put a world of information at our fingertips. They free people to work from home. Smartphones and tablets can also promote efficiency by allowing people to get things done in spare moments that would otherwise be wasted, such as while commuting from and to work. But we have seen since the dawn of humanity examples of things getting out of control and in this case the servant became the master. There are negative aspects of this hyperconnectivity: we have become in many way slaves of our own tools. We seem to be working more home (at least i am), I find myself often checking my e-mail and using my smartphone obsessively, even during family dinner time this was happening, until we made a conscious decision to turn the electronics off so we could have a quite decent family time. This is so sad... just the fact that I am talking about it means that at least for a while this basic human activity became challenged by those pesky, flashy addictive gadgets. What is wrong with me? I read somewhere that our beloved smartphones are the best excuse for procrastination, as if I ever needed another excuse!!! Another thing happened when we started using e-devices , word processors and texting... nothing it seems is final. We can change our minds in an instant; we can change documents etc... Is this good? well nothing is that good or bad and in some instances this is an advantage but think also of the downsides. Nothing it seems has a deadline. And do not get me started on the issue of multitasking and hyper-distraction... wait someone just texted me... just kidding, but it happens. I have been exploring some solutions to this problem. My brother who on a given day had on him a Blackberry, an Iphone, an iPad another tablet made by Nokia and his laptop started having chronic headaches. He was examined from head to toe and thankfully nothing bad was found. I e-mailed something in the morning expecting an answer when work was done but I got a response almost instantaneously. He is a runner and he uses one of those fancy watches that keeps track of your time, distance, route, calories, heart rate and who knows what else and while on vacation in Europe he started posting his results via his ipad ( as if I really care to know that he has time and $ to go to Europe and go on vacation and i do not but that is for different course) and then it dawned on me... this guy needs some heavy digital detoxification and he has slowly but surely been working on it, he has two hours during the day when he is not to use any electronic device and he gave away his second tablet and Blackberry... his symptoms are getting better but he is not yet well. Then I read about digital dieting and explained to him as I read it: "Just as the abundance of junk food means that people have to be more disciplined about their eating habits, so the abundance of junk information means they have to be more disciplined about their browsing habits". I told him he should once again be the owner of his devices and outsmart his tech. toys; we are getting better. Why do I talk about my brother and not of myself, because thanks to my line of work and the fact that my hospital does not have WiFi, I have periods when I am techno silent... that is until get home. He is not alone we start empowering these gadgets to control us more and more... they have our schedules, bank accounts, passwords etc.... Aahhh and the industry, they keep making devices faster, better, fancier with better apps, and they making us worse addicts.
And what about education? It all depends what age of students you have. For the most part cell phones have been banned in the classroom, and many schools and teachers, state that they are a serious distraction for their students; any of you have ever been into a lecture given to a bunch of physicians? You could make a symphony with the amount of ringtones and beeps you hear almost constantly because remember we need to be available 24/7 and at a moments notice. I do not teach young crowds so I am no authority on the subject whatsoever, but I do see advantages to lift bans on smartphone use and asking kids to use their phones and mobile devices as learning tools. But I leave that up to you experts to decide. If anything we should be evaluating this before passing judgement. If I was a student in this era I would most certainly promote and be using smartphones and gadgets in general to enhance my education experiences. Have you seen how many cool educational apps there are out there in cyber world, here are some examples:
Chemistry Helper

A simple app designed as a quick reference for chemistry students. Includes:
A periodic table with links to wikipedia
a tool to calculate molecular masses of compounds - with a button at the top to perform simple grams/moles calculations, calculate mass percents and do stoichiometry with that compound
a table of polyatomic ions
constants
solubility rules
tools for calculating molarity
iGeology - Android and iPhone - Free for non-commercial use

iGeology is for anyone who wants to explore their local geology virtually anywhere in the UK.
Amateur geologists, walkers and gardeners can look at what is in their local area, to find out about the rocks at the surface or the bedrock beneath.
Search using place names or the postcode where you live, then click on the map and reveal the rocks beneath your feet.
Google Sky Map - Android - Free

Google Sky Map turns your Android phone into a window on the night sky. Point your phone skywards to visualise stars, planets and constellations in real time as you scroll across the sky.
Biochemistry Lab Suite - Android - Free

Covering solutions, chemicals, proteins, peptides, metabolites and mass spectrometry. The app aims to help scientists and students working in the field of mass spectrometry based biochemistry, biology and chemistry, but it is also useful in general lab work.
Elements 2.0 - Android - Free

A comprehensive periodic table including thermal, physical and atomic properties and everything else you'd expect. A great 21st Century way to keep the periodic table handy.
Starmap - iPhone - fees apply

Similar to the Google Sky Map, this is a sophisticated interactive star-map that its makers call a "portable planetarium". Simply loint to the sky and learn about the stars and planets you can see.
Netter's Anatomy Flash Cards - iPhone - Fees apply

Need some help with your anatomy? This comprehensive app lets you test yourself - do you know how the knee bone connects to the thigh bone? You can also download Netter's Neuroscience Flash Cards.
This is so cool. Why didn't I have any of these amazing tools? I am envious of this generation in many ways. Handheld devices can change the way education is delivered because it allows children to learn "anywhere, anytime, any place" This cartoon summarizes my position and stance on the subject. These gadgets if used properly can be tremendous enhancement tools for educational purposes. The key is using them responsibly and evaluating their impact.


We are starting to see the raise of of e-books - downloaded from the internet onto electronic devices - sold over the last 12 months. It is estimated than Amazon.com now sells almost 2.5 books via its Kindle reading device for every one hard copy.This issue raises some pretty heated arguments. Should you throw your old books on the bonfire? No so fast, everything is happening very fast, there are definitely advantages from a publishing point of view to have e-books. They are cheaper to produce and easier to update, they can be enhanced with multimedia etc... but we have to let things mature before we stop turning pages in books and smelling that nice aroma of nice paper.

We must establish a vision for our students and model the use of cell phones as mobile learning devices in order to empower them to embrace them for this purpose, not for socialization . We In our current climate these devices are a huge part of our lives. Schools should position themselves to not only take advantage of this resource as budgets are tight, but also teach students about the powerful tool they possess. We should be excited to work to expand the use of mobile learning devices to improve teaching and learning and to document the value of this.

This is by far the best of the articles I have read from this series. It is great because it is objective and it does not have a visceral prejudicial approach to technology and digital media, where by definition or better as it seems to me from what I have read so far is the fact that the internet is bad, however if things are printed in a book, they are not only good but true. I disagree with this stance. I also think that it is the one that touches directly on the quality of education from digital media and not just with issues of sexuality and content in the web.
Salient points:
1-Transition to digital information , storage, analysis, and distribution has happened in an astoundingly short period of time and now it seems everything is in digital format and if not pretty soon iyt will be.
2-Quality of online content and self-support options can have direct impact on the learning process.
3-The author's have a problem with search engines and the way the information and hits are presented. "Popularity equals credibility" and this might not always be the case and there maybe bias and conflicts of interests in the process. That is bad of course but considering that for example Google has 34,000 searches per second (2 million per minute; 121 million per hour; 3 billion per day; 88 billion per month) I guess humans now accepted and believes in this search engine quite a lot. Are we all that studied then?
4-The other issue that always comes up is the credibility of Wikipedia. But just to put things in perspective Encyclopedia Britannica threw the towel to its existence because simply it could not compete with that giant monster that is digital media.
5-And how about blogs? In 2010 there were approximately 450 million active english language blogs. I ask again are we the majority of people that read or have blogs the "bad" majority? I am not saying that all blogs are good or credible by any means, but neither are newspapers or networks for that matters. I see news media being biased every day and this being the central point of controversy and discussions.
6-Builders of digital networks and information services are now more open and by creating more opportunity for user participation in content creation and dissemination. I think this very cool not bad at all.
7-The open source approach states that to be secure, software must first be transparent and then tested by users. I am and have been beta tester of several programs and think this is very important.
Bottom line is that information from all sources needs to be taken with caution. The issue with digital technology is the fact that I can see why there can potential pitfalls with bad information but that is when one has to be a smart user and be skeptical even of one's shadow.

F. Urdaneta

I read this reference today and I must say I agree with only about 20% of what the authors state:
1.a In terms of education not only children need to be careful with Internet and other reading sources, we as adults also need to be careful as well. According to the reference "youth's high degree of immersion, coupled with areas of na ̈ıvete ́, differences in cognitive development, and usage of digital media elevate the importance of understanding credibility within this user population. Just Google recent academic misconduct scandals due to research fraud in Medicine. In my specialty there are two huge cases that are still generating noise and will continue to do so for quite a while.
1.b I disagree that all printed material is trustworthy but Internet material is of dubious nature.
Indeed source information is sometimes unavailable, masked, or entirely missing from a Web site, chat group, blog, wiki, etc. In other cases, source information is provided, but it is hard to interpret, such as when information is coproduced; re-purposed from one site, channel, or application to another; or when information aggregators display information from multiple sources in a centralized location that may itself be perceived as the source.I agree that one problem with sites such as Wikipedia is the fact that no authors or sources are listed, but are you telling that everything in books is the truth? I recommend a great vacation book called "Lies my teacher told me" by James Loewen; it is a summary of stories that pass from generation to generation, from textbook to textbook but are 100% false and 0 % fact. I bet everyone remembers the story that Christopher Columbus told Queen Isabel from Spain that he thought the earth was flat... DYK this (pardon my french is B.S?!) This story like many others was originated in a novel written in the 1800's.... and ever since it appears in all history textbooks! RU guys telling me this is the only legend that books have turned into reality? I do not want to digress but the book I mentioned is 376 pages long. There reference states "digital media are challenging our fundamental ideas about learning and education is prevalent among teachers and librarians" but I already mentioned that not all information in books is accurate so I remain skeptical of all information whether it comes in printed form or in digital form.
1.cMore and more organizations are migrating to the Web, and making information accessible exclusively via digital means
1.c Digital media has provided access to an unprecedented amount of information available for public consumption. The beauty and major challenge is the fact that e-media has the ultimate duality of being a great way to spread truth and be an excellent collaboration media with unprecedented reach, but it can be a source for things to go wrong "in a New York minute" and turn into one of those "Viral" things we sometimes read about. If a local paper prints something its circulation is limited to a relative small population, on the other hand if one looks at the number of followers in social media websites of certain popular characters, there is a new meaning for putting your foot in your mouth. *Funny cartoon

F. Urdaneta

I am identifying a lot with this book and really liking the concept and more importantly how it was created: by collaboration. So far here are my highlights:
1-"Digital media and networks have become embedded in our
everyday lives and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in
knowledge production, communication, and creative expression." I could not agree more
2-They also talk about the digital divide which in this country happens to be from age differences but in underdeveloped areas of the world the issue of age is potentiated with issues of lack or outdated technology.
3-"Generational identity and technology identity" so true. There is a big gap about what the current generation has grown up accustomed to and what we in my generation did. We have to bring this gap to a minimum in order to talk the current generation's lingo. Challenging but exciting stuff.
3-Another issue that I like is the concept of the connected generation. We cannot IMO allow our youth to be fully engaged with technology at home and then come to school and prohibiting their use of electronics. Sure they used it for inappropriate activities sometimes, but Imo this is because we are not engaging them or challenging them enough. I would like to hear what teachers say about this ; I am obviously privileged about the fact that teach more mature students. But i am also a parent of two teenagers.
4-Regarding this question (I will continue with my read tomorrow since I have other issues to attend) "How are
new media being taken up by youth practices and agendas? And how do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?" I guess it is too early to tell because our generation had to learn all of these new skills before we could use them in the classroom of the generation X'ers that had this handed to them naturally.
Young people are definitely early adopters to technology and actually technology seems more natural to them. They did not grow at a time when technology and computers were not as widespread as they are now. My generation and above did and this makes for an interesting mix and population clashes.
I like the concept and this is a new way for me to see technology that it is not a external force but rather something that becomes embedded in society and if I understand it correctly there it shapes the way we interact with one another.
Another new concept for me is that learning is much broadly defined; it is not just learning content but also how technology shapes young people social status (friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and
work)
This sociology-of-youth-and-children approach is new to me and I respect them for doing and using this method. But I am a bit skeptic because after all childhood is temporary and the actually chose young adults for their observation. They describe it as an ethnographic view of youth; with attention to both the focal object of
their culture and to the relationships with adults. (They keep "introducing" and talking in future tense but I am getting tired of this description. I want to get to the meat and potatoes of their findings)
They finally say something interesting and is about not just youth technology consumption but also about the
participation and production of "user-generated" content. I see this as a potential key to enter into their world.
I totally agree with this "the most engaged and active forms of learning with digital media happen in youth-driven settings that are focused on social communication and recreation" I am a believer in active rather than passive learning and use engaging methods in all my educational activities.
I like the concept of wide ecology of education. It is talking about children but imagine this translated into my field of medical education.
Then it introduces 21st century skills and talks about social interaction as friendship driven practices and interest driven practices. I honestly do not like to consider the latter as geeky activities but I understand that society does so they used that term.

Media Ecologies:

Young kids in this country are growing up in a media
environment where digital and networked media are playing an increasingly
prominent role. It is a technical, social, cultural, and place-based system. Even those without access to "gadgets" are members of a shared culture where new social
media, sharing, media production are the way to go. It is a highly technologically oriented world. What for example my generation did person to person to interact to each other this generation is doing electronically and so we have an interesting mix of what i will call traditional methods with what I will call the modern 21st century way. This environment or as the book calls it "ecology" affects young people's practices, learning, and identity formation.
I am finding that I am thinking more about my two kids growing up than I guess I am supposed to, but this is inevitable. My two kids grew up with a geeky parent and they learned how to use a computer before they learned to ride a bike. I do identify with what they say that when it comes time about social media participation my oldest son has a FB account but not my daughter. I agree that kids at different times possess varying levels of technology- and media-related expertise, interests and motivations. I like the concept of technologically identity fluidity. We and for that matter they do not have stable media identities but rather a context driven identity. For youngsters or kids and I do men this generically this is important to understand and discuss.
Flexibly in mobilizing different communications capabilities, kids overcome some of the limits that prevent them from hanging out with friends. Do we think kids and adults use the internet for sharing, collaborating and socializing in general? Take a look at this Prism that puts this in context:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansolis/2735401175/
Students in schools with technology resources frequently give their students permission to access to the Internet in certain classrooms but there is a constant tug of war between the use and no use of technology specially smartphones in school. We now see a disconnect between the amount of technology kids use at home compared to what they are allowed to use in school, due to various concerns such as safety, privacy, distraction.
Bottom line of this chapter is that we multitask and play different roles and simply speaking we do not have just one identity or are uni-dimensional. The same said for our kids. The difference lies on the fact the we and once again and despite the fact that the chapter talks only about kids but IMO we adults are in the same boat, there are different ways in which modern humans (whom I will refer from now on as Homo-techno-Nexus) engage with new media and how their engagement relates to social participation and identity and the beat goes on and social media and technology continues to permeate every aspect of our existence including of course education.