Thursday, October 29, 2015

Post #8: Implications of The Information Diet, by C. Johnson: Where there's a will, there's a way.

      I found this book the most readable due to the author's writing in a kind of storytelling fashion.  Including a lot of recent historical facts about the machinations of media and the people that create it. It began with the author's awakening to the media machine in Washington, DC and his growing cynicism over the true purposes and effects of the use of media.  The last half of the book is suggesting a way to proportion your daily intake of information, both digital and hard copy.

What I see in my teaching is that the information that I provide to the students must battle with all of these other sources of information.  And it's a losing battle. There is no diet for teenagers, parents are mostly unaware of what their children are looking at on their phones all day.  When I walk down the halls of my school, students have their faces buried in their phones, they wouldn't notice a Leprechaun riding a unicorn go by.  To top it off, there is no way to enforce it, and that's when they are IN SCHOOL.  What happens when they get out?  Even more of the same, I'll wager.

In class, our group of Shawn, Muffin and myself came up with a device for students to manage their information diet called, "The PIE", for "Planned Information Expenditures".  It consisted of colored pieces of paper, cut into overlaying circles.  I cut slits into each circle so it could be visible from the top side and each color represented a part of the information diet: Red - POV/Diversity; Blue - Skill Development; Green - Local/Social; Yellow - Entertainment; and Purple - Shopping. You could change each layer's portion of the whole circle and the idea was to indicate consequences of too much of any one area.  The idea is that this disc could fit in a binder as a reminder to students during the day on how their information time should be allocated.  This could also be adapted to an app, but the enforcement and parent tie-in would have to be worked out to be effective. Whatever device is developed, students and parents must have the will to follow it, otherwise there's no way it's going to be worth anything.

3 comments:

  1. Since my students are not allowed to have their cell phones and tablets in class, I do not see the same issues you are seeing with your high school students. At some point I may see the same problems, as it seems like we are heading towards that in the lower grade levels. If that is the case, I feel like we need to incorporate an information diet program. There has to be something that parents, teachers, and students have to follow in order to be productive information seekers. Without a guide, we will become lost is a sea of data without any lifeboat there to rescue us. We should totally trade mark that thing before someone steals it from us. Might be our ticket to early retirement!

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  2. Be thankful that you do not, it's just like anything else. The good students might be more disciplined in their use, but the "at-risk" kids will use it to escape from any school work. This is a Pandora's box, there's no going back once you allow it in the schools. Admin just keeps making these changes to our instructional day without care if they work or not, thinking they'll fix it next year. Can you imagine trying to compete for an elementary school child's attention with their attention span, if they had phones? It's a losing battle, and there's no going back this time.

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  3. We have no phones, personal computers, or tablets in class in my school. In fact, they have to lock that stuff all up in the vestibule before they go through the metal detectors. And it is amazing how they find the time to check their email, surf, and do everything else before and after class, during lunch, and in some cases, during class. I fear for my own sanity. We can complain all we want, but like Socrates, it is a losing battle. In fact, I have long complained about the nose in the phone, and how the younger generation can't communicate in person without a keyboard. But after reading the book, I have changed my mind. I can see that I can be that stubborn old man whining on and on about the past, or I can understand that just like my generation that first used calculators, the cell phone generation can still achieve and be both successful and thoughtful. We just have to adapt.

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