Hey guys!!
I have a pretty steady routine on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My arrival time for work at Student Activities is 8:30 am and its usually pretty quiet; my morning consists of getting the office ready for the upcoming day and handing out ping pong paddles and pool stuff to our dedicated students who arrive in the union to play games before the office is even open.
Once those tasks are completed, I am able to turn on my computer and set about my usual “news binge.”
I am a news junkie. Literally. I go from www.yahoo.com; to www.foxnews.com; to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/weird-news/ (they have some really interesting articles, whether they are true or not is the lure which pulls me) and so on and so forth goes my endless stream of news websites intermixed with a healthy dose of my favorite blogs.
I believe it is very important for our generation to be “in the know,” so to speak, about what is happening in our world today. With the policies of our country changing so quickly and news flying at us a mile a minute, we need to stay well read and up to date on current events. Now sometimes this means reading an article about economic policy reform (something that I am interested in..amazingly) and other times it means that you get to read an article about conspiracy theories involving a UFO sighting over Austin, Texas (another topic that I am interested in).
Other times, you come across an article that is in the middle of these two topics, and could affect you.
Today as I was going through my daily news cycle, I came across an article on a blog about texting during classes. It was not your normal “children should not be allowed to carry cell phones in school, let alone text message!!” lecture. Instead, the article was about some schools right here in New York, who are integrating texting into their curriculum.
Now, having the evils of texting thrown in my face by every single high school teacher and college professor I have ever had, has made me cautious when hearing people begin to accept texting as anything more than a nuisance. Don’t get me wrong…I text during class just as much as the next person. In fact, there was,at the beginning of my Senior year of high school, serious talk amongst the school administration about banning cell phones at my school and my mother was up in arms about it, not to mention the students who attended with me. But would texting assignments really be beneficial?
I don’t really think so. First of all, it really is a distraction, whether we as students want to admit it or not. No one thinks anything of sending a quick text during class, but we’ve all been in the situation where we hear little buttons clicking during a lecture and just wanna grab the hidden phone out of our classmates hand and chuck it across the room.
Secondly, texting is not meant to be “work.” It’s a form of communication between people. If all schools were to add texting “assignments” to their curriculum, suddenly, a quick LOL would turn into 2+2=4….do we really want that?
I will post the link to the website below, and granted, this article is about the new pro-texting policy being implemented in middle school; but tell me what you think about the possibility of it being implemented in college. Would you enjoy texting assignments? Would they bother you?
Also, let me know what you think about how informed our generation about what is going on in our world. Should we, as young adults be taking more steps in order to be “in the know?” Non-traditional students, what do you think about the information the younger generation cares about?
Let me know, guys!!
Until next time,
Emily
Genesee Community College Blog 