- How have your individual communication skills changed as with the innovations in technology?
My individual communications skills have changed. I have had no choice in the matter! Sharing my ideas and listening to ideas of others is extremely important in the classroom. Students ideas of listening have changed, students attention spans have changed. The way we all think has changed. Social interaction, not just learning in the classroom has changed. There are layers of communicating, listening to a teacher tell a story, actual face-to-face meaningful conversations, occasional phone conversations, a message to a friend in social media, a short text. Social media lead people to feel they are not alone when they are in reality are sitting in their home without any other person there. A tweet, or checking in on Facebook and the person feels they are connected to others. But what about emotional attachment to the person, not the technology? Do they really know the other person, how they are feeling about life in general, do they really care? Are they making a cursory connection, or are they really friends who know one another well and know what each other needs? By cursory I mean an acquaintance, someone who is not known deeply, someone who is recognizable. Where are the personal, emotional connections? Where is the deep social interaction? Do they know how to be kind and considerate of one another in person? I am seeing this in my classroom every day. Students are disconnected emotionally, but connected technologically. They are constantly texting even when they are together. The students text during class, whether the teachers see them or not, whether they should be paying attention to the topic of the class or not. I recently saw a student texting in my class and asked her to first, place her phone up on the sink (I am in a science lab) upside down and then to go call her parent to tell them what she had been doing rather than paying attention to the lesson. She called her father. The response of the parent was to ask his child to text him the moment she got her phone back (I had never taken it). There was no concern about the reason for the call, to point out the student was not paying attention, it was all about the loss of her "connection." It didn't matter who she was texting, nor why, nor that I was attempting to point out the student's focus was not on the lesson where I felt it should be. The student wanted to connect with someone and the parent wanted to make sure their child was able to make connections at will. My point was entirely missed. I was seen as the mean teacher taking away and punishing the student's connectivity, not as the teacher trying to focus the student on the content of the lesson.
- How have advancements in technology altered classroom communication? Will these change further?
Yes, advancements in technology have altered classroom communication. Sometimes the advancements are for the better, and sometimes for the worse. Better is the ability to find any just about any information one wishes to know. Worse is the distraction of just about any information there is. I think as students disconnect from their peers and others, their face-to-face social skills will continue to change while they believe their connectivity is increasing through texting, gaming, social media, etc.
