Evolution or Devolution?

15 years ago, I was a strapping, young lad of 13 years. When I wanted to socialize, I jumped on my bike, and willingly undertook the laborious, 10 minute ride to my friend’s house. I rang the doorbell and when someone opened the door I eloquently asked(if it was my friend’s older sister opening the door, my eloquatiousness would become guttural gurglings.),  if my friend would come out and play. I would either get a yes or a no.

If my friend was home and he wanted to play, we would do exactly that. We’d run around in the forest with sticks and stones, shouting and whispering. We’d climb some trees, dig some holes, dig up some worms, catch a frog and throw pinecones at the neighbour’s cat.

If he wasn’t home, I would just as happily jump back on my bike, ride like the wind to the next friend, or sometimes just back home. At home I would construct enormous lego towers, lego spaceships and lego cars(I was a really big lego fan). Or maybe I’d read a book, run around on the lawn or go for a one man expedition to my neighbourhoods trollforest and fend of some imaginary evil trolls with my trollsmiting stick and some well aimed troll-vanquishing rockgrenades.

Now I picture my 5 year old soon in the future. He goes to school, he does his homework, and then when he wants to socialize, he turns on the computer or Ipad, logs into facebook or msn, and chats with his friends. If they’re feeling up to it, they might even run around in the interactive landscapes of counter-strike or call of duty, and repetedly kill each other with really big guns.

There most certainly is a development in technology and in how we relate to said technology. The question we must ask ourself is; will this development turn the evolution of man into a progression or a regression?

It seems to me that the production of technology is a production of needs. In my home we recently acquired an Apple Ipad. I was at first a little sceptical, and I didn’t really think we had a NEED for this device. It turns out it makes my life SO MUCH EASIER! Now, when drinking my morning coffee, I can log onto facebook, check my e-mail and the news just while relaxing in the sofa. I don’t have to walk down all those stairs, balancing a cup of espresso intenso freshly made from our new Dolce Gusto capsule coffemachine(which is bloody hard work, but the coffee machine makes it REALLY EASY to make coffe) just to turn on the stationary computer.

I was also more than a little sceptic to Facebook when that first arrived, but now I’m logged in there every day. And its SO EASY to stay in touch with old school friends from 10 years back who I didn’t even like back then, but they write so many interesting things on their wall that I can’t imagine my earlier dislike of them.

So when everything becomes easier, less is demanded from our ability to both physically and mentally interact with our surroundings. Evolution permits all living things to evolve according to their surroundings. In the case of humanity, I suspect we have already begun our devolution…. 

Now this is just something I’ve been thinking about, and I have yet to conclude one way or the other, but I’m thinking:

Can overuse of, and a high level of dependency on ICT equipment cripple our creative work as teachers? And will, ”doing it the easy way”, make us stupid?

I work as a teacher and on the school that i work, we have three classrooms with smartboards on the walls.

www.smartboard.com

A smartboard is an interactive whiteboard that allows you to run every computer application on a big screen, including several computer applications that are especially made for smartboard(one of these application is really cool and allows you to handle your presentations in a very visual way)

I use computers on a regular basis, so it’s easy for me to construct  good, and very visual presentations for the classes that I have. Suddenly the lightbulb in my smartboard projector decided to explode. And now I feel that maybe my lack of old school experience makes it harder for me to produce good quality teaching.

Now I’m not saying that I always use the smartboard, and always do presentations like a one way monologue. As a matter of fact I use alot of groupwork, work in pairs and so on, BUT when I want to prepare a presentation, and I don’t have the ICT equipment that I would like, it doesn’t always feel like a great lesson.

I am also starting to realize that if I don’t soon back-up all the work on my work laptop, I will have no documentation to speak of that reflect my students work, progress and level of achievement, IF something happens to my computer. And computers aren’t excactly known to work forever with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

According to wikipedia (in norwegian unfortunately; http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalisering_av_prosesser); digitalization is the process of utilizing ICT equipment to simplify mundane tasks and procesess and making them more effective.

My argument is that simplifying tasks, will demand less of us when we are performing the tasks. So when the ICT equipment breaks down, the once easy tasks, will suddenly become not so easy. And when we are used to things being easy, we might have a problem of achieving the same quality standard of our work when things get hard…..

Naming my blogg Klyv....

So for my first ICT assignment I have made this blog. It will be interesting to see how this works out and if I'm gonna be a "sharer" on the www...
I named my blog Klyv. No reason really, other than my lack of imagination and mye obsession with climbing. Klyv is the norwegian word for scramble(which is an action taken when the terrain you are moving through recquires movement just a little bit more advanced than walking).
So there you go... I will put up a new post with some nice and interesting ICT related theme for next time...