Watch us play with Adobe Connect:
I was able to find a few passages in Turkle’s Alone Together, that deal with multitasking and its growing relevance to modern society. Some believe that multitasking is “the crucial skill” for working and learning in this digital age, and that traditional teaching methods “hamper student learning.” Regardless, studies consistently show that multitasking actually reduces efficiency and productivity and that students who busy themselves with other things during class often don’t do as well as students who leave their computers at home.
- Jocelyn
Sherry Turkle writes in Alone Together that that new technologies can bring on anxieties and disconnection. With technology, we have the ability to place people away into varying ranges of intimacy. If phone calls are too intimate, text offers a better solution. If face-to-face interaction is too personal, then we have Adobe Connect and other web conferencing tools to allow us to separate. We honestly don't know what each other are doing while we web conference, which can cause us to question if we really are communicating. As admitted through first hand accounts in Alone Together, people can't even focus on a web conference without seeking out email or Facebook, making the conversation disconnected. (Turkle 13-17). Nicholas Carr writes that because of technologies ability to monitor our life and to send us reminders and notifications, we actually want to be interrupted. "We crave the new even when we know that 'the new is often more trivial than essential' "(Carr 133-134). Therefore Adobe Connect causes a social disconnect by allowing us to keep people at comfortable distances and by allowing us to grant our needs for new data income (notifications, alerts, reminders, etc.) to make us feel satisfied and at peace.
In Rewired, Rosen states, “The stark reality is that today’s kids just can’t do one task without wanting to do a bunch of other things at the same time. It’s a way of life for them. The natural inclination to multitask in these young kids probably has many sources, including the cool, dazzling, multifunctional new devices that permit and encourage multitasking. What might this constant need for multitasking mean to parents and educators? For one thing, it could mean that long cherished demand for improving learning and raising grades . . . simply might not work anymore.” The world of technology is constantly changing, and education needs to keep up with it. Adobe Connect supports a wide range of media content, which can enable a sort of multitasking, and can generally improve interest. I think that Adobe Connect offers a great, interactive experience that can take the learning style of modern day kids into consideration.
- Steven
- Joshua
