Tarlow & Spangler article

Information highway, gigahertz, megabytes, zoom, clock cycle are a few of the prevalent words on our mouth today as we navigate through the 21st century. To think or not to think, devote time or not to devote time are some common questions that we have to answer. Our forefathers did a great job telling a detailed event from memory; they had amazing memories for land forms or for stories and songs. The problem with that is when they die, details are lost or we totally have no knowledge of events they never told to us simply because it was never written down but passed from generation to generation by mouth. Now the terabytes and gigabytes are here. With modern technology, we add rapid, easy access to that information. We can do things with computer that are beyond imagining (Tarlow & Spangler, 2001). They observed we have access, theoretically, to all knowledge through our literacy. Are we prepared to give up all that proved to be our backbone? Now more than ever, we are asking the question – “will high-tech kids still think deeply?

Technology came and it is taking over our life in ways that we least expected. It will be very beneficial if we stop to take a stock and reflect on whether technology is actually influencing our life in the way we really want it to or has it become a cancer in our life. We cannot discard the building blocks that literacy gave us many years before technology arrived. No doubt these blocks have proven the cornerstone for many generations. Is it time to reject the cornerstones simply for technology? As observed by Tarlow & Spangler (2001), we must learn what we can from children. But we must also redouble our efforts to be sure that they still get the benefits of our oral and literate traditions through plenty of physical activity, singing, making things with the hands, listening to and reading literature, drawing pictures with crayons and paints, sending and receiving letters and pretending.

According to Tarlow & Spangler (2001) we do well to examine literacy, technology, and thinking also consider whether the changes that have naturally occurred because of our available technologies are the direction in which we would want our society to drift. Unlike in the military, we do not want to just obey the last command. Let us employ our thinking to make value judgments, to examine where our technologies have taken us and where they might take us in the future – and whether this is a direction that is good for us. Through literacy we are able to connect and construct meaning. Working hard at a goal and perseverance pays us dividends and benefit others. We should start to utilize our thinking and coordinate that expansion of our thinking modes with ever changing technology. Let us all deep think and make technology a machine - that makes work easier. Our kids are not to become robots coded with programs without which they are no good.

References:
Tarlow, M. & Spangler, K.L. (2001). Now more than ever: Will high-tech kids still think deeply? The Education Digest, 67(3), 23-27.

http://www.fno.org/mar97/deep.html