Readers,
Sometimes, I ask myself - "Can college students actually survive without technology?" Well, one college actually decided to see how college students would react to a sans technology campus. This university blocked Twitter and Facebook on campus computers. Here's the interesting caveat, I wonder if the students accessed the technology on their cell phones. hmmm.... Would this be considered "cheating"?
Well, the article addressed this as well...
Critics noted students could visit the sites with smartphones or by walking to nearby buildings with free WiFi. But Darr said the point was not to prevent access so much as to get people to think critically about the role of social media in their lives.
In my opinion, this was an ingenious strategy to enable college students to see what their lives would actually be like without having technological interruptions every few minutes.
Here were some interesting "findings":
But during the ban, 33 percent of students reported feeling less stressed. Twenty-one percent said they used their normal social networking time to do homework, while 10 percent said they read online news.
Some students changed their study methods. Darr cited a Facebook-based tutoring effort that was failing to explain a complex biology process to students; they grasped the concept only after a face-to-face meeting during the blackout, he said.
Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.
