Activity III

Technology is something that is big all around the world today. A good portion of people think that the younger generation is the ones who are so tech-savvy. However it seems if you ask the younger generation, they will beg to differ on how technology advanced they really are.
Vaidhyanathan says kids have grown up with the internet and are “accustomed to the entire world being only a mouse click away.” I do agree with this point. Most teenagers I know, myself included, will google anything that we do not know thinking that the vast inter-web holds all the world’s answers. Vaidhyanathan also says how the young generation will avoid the library and this I do not agree with. Personally, I would normally choose the library over internet research. I do use google to find spur of the moment things, but I would really prefer to be in a library surrounded by books when I am doing research. After all, anyone can make a website; not everyone can publish a book.
I do no believe that technology driven education is a “one size fits all.” Vaidhyanathan makes some very good points. “Every class has a handful of people with amazing skills and a large number who can’t deal with computers at all,” says Vaidhyanathan. Personally, I can work word, excel, and power point, save and upload documents to emails, and work my way through most of the internet. But asking me to do more than that is really pushing it. At the beginning of the semester I didn’t even know how to do a screen capture!
Vaidhyanathan also says that college students are not as “digital” as most think that they are. Being a college student I really have to agree with this. Most people think that us college students have all the high tech advancements and can do anything in the snap of a finger. I have said it before and I will say it again, I am not tech savvy and I do not have the high tech advancements. Most of us really cannot afford it. We are college students after all. I certainly cannot afford a MAC or an IPhone. Vaidhyanathan says how all the talk of people who were “born digital” completely bypasses the norm of college students. “What do we miss when we pay attention to only the perceived digital prejudices of American college students,” asks Vaidhyanathan.
The truth is we miss a lot. If you just pay attention to the richest college students in the country then you are looking at a very small group. Sure you will have a few kids maybe in each class who pull out their MAC and Iphone, but if you really look at a typical college class, you will see students pull out their Verizon Samsungs and pen and paper to take notes. Typical college class.
As Vaidhyanathan goes on to explain in the article, my generation is known as the technology generation though wrongly named as a lot would agree. My dad can dance circles around me in the computer world and he was born in 1960. Yet why isn’t his generation named the technology generation? All in all, I agree with the points Vaidhyanathan is bringing up. My generation does have technology all around us but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have access to all the forms. And like I said, sometimes traditional modes are just easier.