Danielle's blog

As a part of my job, I advise our Student Government organization on our campus.  Student Government’s role is to advocate for our student body and to be their voice.  One way our membership has taken this is through collecting Student Government Concern Forms and seeking out answers to the concerns brought forth by the student population.  Once we have an answer to the question or concern, it gets posted to our FAQ page for the College.  Today my Vice President brought in an anonymous concern form (most never put there names or contact information one them) regarding technology/media at the College.

As my previous posts have indicated, all of these technology sites make my head spin.  For our students this seems to be the case even more.  Our students are pressed for time and they have little technological skills to be able to navigate all of platforms that we host as a College….unless it has a significant benefit to them.  Anything that does not have a strong benefit to our students goes untouched by those who don’t have to use it.  In referencing the above picture, students have to learn how to use Blackboard because it is linked to class participation, assignments and grades.  Student do not have to learn OrgSync since it is an extracurricular.  So, naturally OrgSync sees significantly lower use among our students although it contains great information about events happening on campus and how to get involved.

Although technology has significant benefits, people have to have the competency and the time to maximize (or even use at all) its benefits and for it to be a wise investment of both time and money for an organization.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sofia the First, let me educate you.  Sofia the first is a Disney cartoon show that is geared towards little girls.  Sofia is a princess…her and her mom had lived as “village people” until her mom met a prince.  The prince also had two children.  When Sofia’s mom and the prince got married Sofia then became a princess.  Sofia’s dad gives her a necklace that gives her special powers such as talking to animals, becoming a mermaid and shrinking in size.  In the show Sofia is a “nice” princess who is learning what it means to be a princess and each show always has a lesson.  You may be asking yourself, why does a 30 something year old doc student know anything about Sofia the First?  Well my 19 month old daughter is OBSESSED with Sofia.  We generally watch a few shows a day and many times we end up watching the same show 100 times.  We watch this show at night, sometimes in the morning, on the weekends, in the car, at a restaurant.  We are armed with Sofia wherever we go.

Does this make us bad parents that we let her watch Sofia every day?  You know what, I don’t think so.  The doctor says to limit screen time and that we should be reading to her and engaging in play.  Isn’t that what she does all day long at daycare?  My kid is very much an introvert like me and when she gets home from a long and overwhelming day at daycare, all she wants to do is cuddle, relax and watch her show.  Playing and reading causes her to meltdown.  I get that playing and reading are good for brain development but a person needs to be able to kick back and relax too.  I don’t think this makes us bad parents.

Although technology has changed leaps and bounds since I was a child and technology is ingrained in every aspects of kids lives these days (hence trying to limit it as much as we can), I still woke up every morning and watched cartoons, I’m sure I watched them on the weekends and evenings, and I’m sure I was obsessed with them as well and I think I turned out ok even with engaging in some “screen time.”

Mealtime in my household has recently become a disaster.  My daughter just recently turned 18 months old and with that age milestone she has seamlessly mastered temper tantrums.  Mealtime is the root of many of our temper tantrums and has become my most dreaded time and meal.  My daughter used to do great at mealtime…she loved to eat and was fairly well behaved, both at home and when we went out to eat.  At home, the three of us have eaten dinner together at the table since my daughter began eating solid meals.  Eating out at restaurants I had prided myself that we could successfully eat out and that our kid was not the one in the restaurant who was not interacting with the table and glued to the phone/tablet.  Dinner time was something I used to love…I loved our family dinners around the table at home and I love eating out a few times a week.  Now I find myself wondering if we can just bypass dinner all together to avoid the full fledged flailing on the ground, arching backs, screaming, tears, snot, throwing cups and plates, etc.

At home we can let her scream it out and revisit dinner time after the tantrum or we can distract her.  At a restaurant I have stooped to the phone…yes the person who prided herself on her daughter not being dependent on the phone when we ate out has now stooped to that low.  I would sooner crawl under a table and die than have her flailing on the ground, screaming while in public.  As soon as she lets out any semi-loud noise I find myself scrambling for my phone, quickly searching for the Disney Channel app, swearing when I need to log into the app, and handing a show of Sofia the First over to her.  Sofia can entertain her for hours resulting in a quiet, peaceful, non-anxiety ridden dinner thanks to Sofia.  I take a look around the restaurant and all kids are looking down at the table and have the glow in their face of their parents phones.  At least I’m not the only one who has stooped.

This leaves me wondering, how my parents ever manage to take me out to dinner?  I’m sure I was behaved and they were able to hand me a book and I was as happy as could be.  I hand my daughter a book at a restaurant and she attempts to chuck it into the air.  How has technology changed a child’s ability to sit still for any period of time?  How has it changed their ability to interact with others?  How does this habit even begin…its not like she asked for the phone?  Is there any point in destroying my sanity and driving everyone around me crazy but refusing to give her the phone?  Parenting can be hard and sometimes we just have to do the best we can and sometimes that means some Sofia to enjoy dinner out.

Yesterday I took a sick day from work as I had some nasty stomach bug and a fever…yuck!  As I was laying on the couch miserable I could hear each new work email coming in on my phone and I grimaced each time I heard it chime.  I wasn’t at work since I felt like I could barely function and the thought of an email that needed immediate attention made me want to cry.  People at work either didn’t know I was home sick or didn’t care I was home sick.  The world at work was still continuing and things needed attention.  Some of the emails were urgent, others were not.  No matter the importance level, these emails stressed me out as I knew the next day I was back in at work could end up being equally as miserable as being home sick.

As I was laying on the couch I relished for no technology.  The days before email, the days before email coming to my phone.  In those days I would not have had to worry about mustering up enough energy to think of a clear response to an urgent email or I would not have been stressed about everything I knew was happening at work and what that meant for my next day back.  Before the days of technology I could have taken an actual sick day to recover.

Not long after I had these thoughts of a technology free world, others in a Facebook group that I am a part of had similar questions.  I am a member of a Facebook group for Student Affairs Moms and one of the questions that was posed yesterday was if people check emails on their sick days.  The staggering response was yes.  This is obviously something others grapple with as well…I’m sick, I don’t feel well…what is the expectation of me to respond to these emails?  Well I (and others in this group) feel as though the expectation is that you are checking them and responding to them.

My next question was…ok so you are expecting me to respond to and check my emails while I am out sick…but you are still going to expect me to take sick time?  I feel like since the world of technology people were truly able to take “8” hours of sick time to recover and to feel better.  But today with technology I am still expected to take “8” hours of sick time but also expected to “work from home.”  I know some companies have become more accepting of “flex time” or “work from home” time but where I work that’s not the case.  Now that technology has made it to where people expect an immediate response no matter what, when will the understanding happen that either a) you can either be sick and its ok to not check email or respond; or b) that if you spend a good majority of your day on your couch dealing with issues at work that you don’t need to turn in a time off request?

While exploring different technological trends in class, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the ever evolving trends.  Although I certainly do not live under a rock, sometimes I feel like that is the case when exploring some of these tools.  How have I never lived without these?  How have I never heard of these?  How will these impact my life?  That’s the official name for x tool?  It seems as though for every function of my life, there seems to be a tool that can make my life easier.  How am I supposed to know when these come out and keep all of them straight?  I feel like the next piece of technology to come out to make my life easier will be something that will brush my teeth for me.  I mean there are already cars coming out that you won’t have to drive.  What’s the next thing that I will have to learn about and adapt to?

Learning about VoiceThread was what lead me to this post.  According to the article, Using VoiceThread to Promote Learning Engagement and Sucess for All Students by Brunvand and Byrd (2011), VoiceThread is an “interactive, multimedia slide show tool, [that] enables users to hold conversations around images, documents, and videos” (p. 28).  While this may a great tool to engage students both in and out of the classroom and may be really great for students with disabilities, I feel like this is just another thing to add to the list of ‘necessary tools’ that will just become outdated in a year.

I think this is how it feels for my students where I work.  I feel like my college is constantly rolling out a new platform for our students.  While they are all supposed to make their life easier on campus, its all just one more thing they have to be aware of and learn how to use.  Many of the students at my college struggle already to use basic technology such as how to log into their email account and then we expect them to use various separate tools such as OrgSync, Black Board, Career Coach, the smartphone application, an electronic course catalog and registration, online mandatory training on Title IX, etc. Each of these tools can be accessed through their online portal, but each tool is an external site with unique log-in’s for each tool and each as confusing as the next.

While the students I work with are not the norm on college campuses, this is a real challenge for my students as many are non-traditional students that have not been exposed to technology since birth and many under-prepared to succeed in the collegiate setting.  As I have discussed during previous posts, the tool that I use in my job is OrgSync.  While I believe that this tool is user friendly and functions much like Facebook that many students are familiar with, this tool has been a significant learning curve for our students and due to this learning curve has been fought with resistance.  This tool is new, its confusing, and its just another thing they have to take time to learn when time is already stretched and they are overwhelmed by all other technology that is required for their courses.  Then I feel like once we finally have students on board and they have learned to use a specific tool, that tool either changes enough for them to have to learn it again or the college does away with it due to cost and then we are where we began again.

How are my students supposed to learn just basic computer operating skills but also how to use all of these other tools that they ‘must’ know to do what they need to at the college?  I can see how easy it is for them to get overwhelmed by technology and each tool we expect them to use.  Sometimes these feelings of being overwhelmed are enough for a student to seek help and ask questions or to strive to learn about them, but I am sure there are other times when a student feels like they should give up because there is too much technology tools they need to learn?