It took me twice as long as it should have to get through this assignment because I kept checking my phone. Despite the fact that I am currently surrounded by my family for the holiday weekend--parents and siblings and cousins and grandparents--I couldn't stop picking up my phone to check Instagram and Hinge and Twitter to see what I was "missing." Spoiler alert: I wasn't missing anything. But I am surrounded by people I have missed dearly for the past year, but I'm missing out on time with them, because I can't put down my phone, and the reality is that I'm not missing anything other than memory-making moments with my family.
I am acutely aware of the digital reality of which Sherry Turkle speaks in her TEDTalk, "Alone Together." I grew up alongside modern technology, and it has been a defining element of my relationships with so many different people in my life. But the point that she makes--about our reliance on technology for togetherness actually makes us more lonely--is so true. I have felt this way for the better part of a decade. I have experienced, all too acutely, the anxiety of aloneness of which she speaks. I know that I have, at my fingertips, the capability to be instantly connected to someone by way of a social media stream or even a TikTok, because processing that information is a lot easier than sitting with a feeling that may be unpleasant.
But the reality is that I'm not processing what I'm feeling, and in not processing what I feel, I isolate myself from others who may share in that emotion or be able to help me through it. This is what Turkle wants us to understand . These distractions--these "connections" that we think we are making--are just fragile placeholders for strength in solitude. It feels a lot to me like the idea that you can't love someone until you learn to love yourself. You can't make connections with others if you don't know how to connect with yourself.
Wesch encourages us to think this way about learning. He echoes the sentiment of Turkle that individuality and self-directed exploration is the strongest foundation of learning for our students. All people are capable of learning, but it is most effective when our students have the opportunity to find, explore, and understand the significance of what we are learning. Turkle urges us to find the significance of connection with ourselves and others, and Wesch urges us to, as educators, guide our students to find significance in their learning. There is more depth to these processes--relationship building and learning--than we can even fathom. And in a big way, they go hand in hand.
For the past year, many teachers were forced to forge relationships via virtual channels with their students. It was an incredibly difficult experience for students and teachers alike. There was no opportunity for hallway high-fives, or post-graduation hugs, or even shared lunches in the classroom. Many knew their entire classrooms by way of Zoom squares. It was, as Turkle may agree, a phenomenally isolating experience. The aloneness created by the COVID-19 pandemic led to devastating emotional repercussions amongst many populations. The entire virtual existence of the pandemic that so many of us experienced speaks heavily to the Turkle's argument, in that so many felt their relationships suffered on a number of planes.
I am sure, then, that Turkle and Wesch would agree that, as educators, it is imperative that we, in the next year of education, take the time to not only get to know our students on a personal, proximal level, but take those relationships and allow them to grow into more fruitful learning opportunities in the classroom. There were so many calls from so many different directions to flip the entire education framework on its head in the wake of the pandemic, because it became increasingly clear that what we were doing was not working.
The one arena in which I wonder if there would be discord between Turkle and Wesch, however, would be the inclusion of digital resources in everyday learning. Turkle would likely encourage us to not rely on the screen for instructional enhancements, while Wesch would probably leave it up to the studnets how they choose to pursue their learning. From a personal ideological standpoint, I believe it is important to equip our scholars with a technological toolkit for the future, but to take the time to teach them, deliberately, how they work and why we should use them.
At the end of the day, it boils down to individuality on both Turkle and Wesch's count. It seems as though we have forgotten how to just be, at the mercy of the constant information stream we receive via technology. Perhaps, if we, as Wesch suggests, stepped back from this barrage of information and focused in on what excites us, our learning would take on a new light, and we could find ourselves in the glow.
Thank you for this delightful blog. I loved reading it and the cartoons punctuated it perfectly!!
ReplyDeleteYes to all of this! We are so used to being stimulated, we cannot just be, as you said. My students always exclaim how they are bored in class and I always try to tell them that even those moments are important. Our students are always "on," never "off." They don't understand that they actually, in fact need to be bored. Here is an article that talks more about the benefits of boredom: https://time.com/5480002/benefits-of-boredom/. People who allow themselves to be bored actually have more creativity.
ReplyDelete