MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
Wasting Time Is New Divide in Digital Era
By artappraiser on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 12:54pm |By Matt Richtel, New York Times, May 29/30, 2012
In the 1990s, the term “digital divide” emerged to describe technology’s haves and have-nots. It inspired many efforts to get the latest computing tools into the hands of all Americans, particularly low-income families.
Those efforts have indeed shrunk the divide. But they have created an unintended side effect [.....]
As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show.
This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it [.....]
URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/new-digital-divide-seen-in-wasting-time-online.html?ref=todayspaper
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Comments
Thank goodness... a new way to blame poverty on the poor! Did you know that some of these people own microwaves and air conditioners? In my day, if the poor wanted to cool down they'd go outside and wait for winter.
by Michael Maiello on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 6:33pm
When I was young I waisted time taking my electronics apart. As I got older I waisted time trying to repair them and put them back together.
Yeah....and ten miles in the driving snow too.
by cmaukonen on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 10:20pm
Many of the parents in high crime areas depend on the media to keep the kids entertained and out of harms way on the streets. That is why they scrape all the money to buy all of them. My 7 and 8 year olds grand kids both have cell phones and I make them take them with them when the go out to play. So far they are taking very good care of them. Tonight my 8 year old was using his andriod to help him figure out his cross word puzzle. He likes cross word books from the news stands. If we lived in a safer area they would be out more doing things instead they take care of imaginary pets and gardens on the intertubes. Right now I am having a Dick Day moment over this article because it is so full of crap. Yes you can always find fault and abuse but it is not the majority. Because of your zip code and your income doesn't make you a bad family. These kids are learning from these tools and they are organizing and networking in way that are making the far right worry. "How are they going to keep these kids from taking over as adults." So,,,worries the crazies.
by trkingmomoe on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 4:44am
Somehow I think I read these articles different than the rest.
There is no "right vs. left" meme here, nor "blaming the poor". It's about the increase in mobile use & general multimedia - now up to 10-11.5 hours per day for a child - a bit more if you're poor.
That's crazy. Angry Birds, Youtube, etc. - there's a little bit of value, such as Facebook for socializing, but not 11 hours worth in formative years. Yes, mobile phones can be useful for all classes, but an electronic baby sitter 11.5 out of 16 waking hours is bonkers.
As the article notes the poor kids often don't have as much supervision during the day, they get their kicks more wasting time without someone telling them no. Of course this can also keep them out of trouble in some ways, but not terribly educational (talking with friends direct might be more usefule a socialization skill).
The one comment above - about ripping apart electronics - is talking about active engagement. I did the same thing with bicycles, cars & electronics. However, most of these devices can't be repaired at home anymore, and the modern tablet is more of a content consumption machine than for creation.
So if "bridging the digital divide" for the poor simply means a smaller, more portable boob tubes, no, it's not a step forward. Literacy isn't much increased via movies or video games. Reading, writing & math aren't much enabled (and I still think the old art of handwriting plus drawing has value even in the digital age).
But go on, everyone, act as if this is class warfare or a right-wing scheme.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 7:36am
You're obviously missing the code word.
by Donal on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 7:55am
by Qbert (not verified) on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 1:43pm
by Donal on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 6:49pm
The loss of handwriting skills is one of the main ones that gives me unease when I think about kidz these days and what the future may be like.
I'm not so negative about them doing the things and having the devices that will be a part of their future but wasn't a part of our world growing up To argue in general that they shouldn't is getting into the home school attitude (or "zero TV" attitude for that matter) where the parents raise a kid that's totally unprepared to enter into society-at-large in the real world.
But the writing skills partly become hard wiring that they will lack; neurological studies show it's also related to other kinds of thought. And also: who thinks qwerty keyboards will exist for eternity? Those highly developed thumb texting skills of teens are already being made obsolete by voice-recognition IPhones.
I also have unease in the reliance on electronics and cell phone towers, and just electricity in general for basic human communication and everyday needs. Maybe we need a few more East Coast several-day-long power outages to make everyone realize what skills are still important to develop in children. Some young people brag they've never written a check, pay bills online and don't use cash. But I've seen firsthand if you want ice in a power outage, or gas or a taxi to get to the hospital, cash is king, as the electronic payment systems are all down.
Then there were those pictures of long lines for the few existing landline pay telephone booths during the Japanese earthquake....
Perhaps it's time for the Boy and Girl Scouts to come up with a new curriculum...
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 1:15pm
To fill in 1 of the pertinent parts, "Angry Birds, Youtube, etc. - there's a little bit of value, such as Facebook for socializing, but not 11 hours worth [per day] in formative years. "
Understanding electricity still seems a good idea....
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 5:18pm
I merely posted the article because it seems to be broadcasting a new meme that will be controversial in education discussion circles. And it includes the news for those who don't know that they can't simply blame "the digital divide" anymore for all those problems--sorry, you gotta come up with something new.
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 12:52pm
It's just emphasizing the obvious - you can't just throw tech toys at education and expect much change - or can even get worse.
Teaching & learning is a complicated, time-intensive task. Much as we'd like conveyor belt approaches, don't work.
And as Bob Somerby notes over and over, minority & poorer class test scores have improved incredibly over the last 2 decades. But no one seems to notice - they keep acting like it's a disaster.
But that's not from mobile phones & playstations or extra testing or vouchers - it's from hard teacher work, and students getting serious. Bravo for them.
(one thing that will mask results, is that with increased non-English immigration, test scores will always be lower for newcomers. Which is fine - the educational system is partly the tough work of helping integrate and improve their academic proficiency, not just take a homogenous student base & run up the scores)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 1:02pm
As someone who is currently involved in dealing with the traditional digital divide for low income families in a rural area, I found the article interesting.
One of the finer points in the article is that the low-income parents are less likely to be technology/social networking/etc savvy, which is a barrier to providing guidance to their children on this front. So while the focus is getting kids to have computers and internet acceess for school, the need to provide assistance to the parents also became clear.
Of course, because the parents are low-income, usually service industry jobs, they have barriers to accessing computer classes etc.
The primary reason that we were focusing on getting technology into the kids hands is because the schools are going the way of high tech. If a kid doesn't have access to the internet at home, it is just one more barrier to their academic success. What the traditional digital divide is less than it use to be, it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.
by Elusive Trope on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 1:57pm
Your info is interesting to me, especially the part about low income families in a rural area.The last couple years (and only in the last couple years, not before) riding the subway from the last stop in the Bronx to Manhattan, I see anecdotal evidence that totally conflicts with the news reports yammering about the working class being computer illiterate and therefore un-hireable in today's world. Seemed to me all of a sudden the working class, white, minority, immigrants all, not just the youngsters but up to the middle aged, all got inexpensive MP3 players and are listening to stuff while checking their cell phones for text messages (often with photos of yesterday's picnic or the like) or playing games on their cell phones. Somehow they all figured out how to use computers to download entertainment once they couldn't get it from the older venues as easily anymore. I even have had this discussion in meatspace with more than one person: I just don't buy the argument "they" can't learn to use a computer at the car repair shop or factory floor, cause I see a lot of evidence "they" are using them all the time now; if anything, it's the upper class people that seem to be using technology in public less than they used to.
It's only the elderly now that seem left out, at least in the Bronx.
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 2:23pm
"Their" parents know how to use the internet, too; examples:
by artappraiser on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 2:55pm
by trkingmomoe on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 6:21pm
knowing how to play angry birds does not equate to being able to work on the computerized assembly line. And even if it does, in the interview process for most corporation, the person being considered for the position telling them they can play Maden 2012 is not going to get them the job. professional HR personnel are trained to seek certification and documentation of technology understanding.
Today I just had a conversation with a person who has one of her key responsibilities of setting up computer classes - and had to basically help her work through her frustration because I emailed her the link to this article. What if you gave a computer class and those who need to show up don't? Whose fault is it?
by Elusive Trope on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 8:53pm
Depends - if their work or life schedule is difficult, the course may have to be on-demand, or recorded for those who can't make it.
But people can be lazy, and if it's dropped in their laps, they don't have to lift a finger, then they may disregard it even more.
Remote education is more difficult than people tend to think.
And thanks for agreeing Angry Birds as not a real job skill.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 11:14pm
Yes, there's a certain education value into learning to plug in your VCR to your TV, or auto-record a TV series.
But since Steve Jobs & co. have put great effort into making MP3 downloads simple, there's just not that much job value - you don't have to touchtype to do this, it's basically go to a Web URL and either pay or pirate your tunes.
Is that the same as knowing how to set up repeat calculations on a row of Excel data, to write a simple Visual Basic macro, or to pretty-print a report?
It used to take some skill for Rock'em Sock'em robot too, or maybe scoring high in Pacman and Asteroids. But move it from a game console to on iPod or smartphone and we start thinking of these as work skills?
Get them hacking tools, set them up with clubs where they show you how to get past the fancy friendly GUI and program the bits and bowels of the thing - write code and manage systems that move data around, visualize it, share it, ....
And it's nice to remember that somewhere on the other side of the world, 300 million kids are getting the idea of hacking their PCs and phones for money with formal programming, database and electronics training, and a future at about $100/month in yuan or rupees. Is playing MP3's and Youtube on the metro going to compete with that?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 11:10pm
Note to self: always be wary of stories about wasting time and money because you never really know how that might turn out in the long run.
One of my favorite quotes:
You probably guessed that I stare at walls a lot. It helps when trying to figure stuff out.
As for the digital divide, education definitely needs rethinking. We need many, many more learning emporiums on all subjects set up like Virginia Tech's math lab. One should be at every corner, just like CVS and Walgreen's or in every strip center like Gold's Gyms.
http://www.emporium.vt.edu/
http://www.educause.edu/learningspacesch42
by EmmaZahn on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 9:33pm
Really, please don't confuse 2 things.
Someone who's working out problems needs time to think, analyze, relax, re-shuffle info.
But that means you already have a task, a job, likely already spent thousands of hours acquiring the skills to make down time actually productive.
Sure, someone sitting on a bus without an education or a job jamming to music might be getting life formative thoughts, but they're more likely just listening to music and taking no steps forward.
There's a lot of poverty around the world, and people have a lot of time to stare at the wall. As a success strategy, the % is pretty poor.
The emorium idea is interesting, but having spent enough time with home education, even smart kids can require some serious hand holding through what seems to be obvious, while the less swift can need direct help every step of the way - it has to be an extremely good program to replace a teacher. Or if your emporium has tutors behind, that could be brilliant but you still need stages to step them through. And for those who can't show up to the center, remote access, which means affordable internet connections & now a $100 tablet or $300 computer.
I just spent an evening on point symmetry with a very clever kid - but somehow even with graphic info showing the reflections on the other side, it was tough getting through. ("Math's tough", says Barbie, but there's a question of how a kid who can learn 5 languages without really trying would have trouble understanding a reflection around a point - how are we wired inside?)
But frankly, teaching math tends to be much easier than teaching English, writing, description, creativity, vocabulary. The full vocabulary for math up through 7th grade is what, 1000 words?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 11:27pm
You read a lot more into my post than what I wrote. Do you do that with everyone? No wonder the 'discussions' go on and on.
How do you figure I confused two things? Never mind.
Tell me instead what skills level you think a child should have before they are strongly encouraged to begin learning on their own? And yes definitely, tutors should available to assist. Peer work groups would be very helpful too.
The traditional teaching model is suboptimal. One teacher for multiple students with varied backgrounds, learning abilities and involved parents. Once that may have been the best we could do. Not so now.
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 12:01am
You as educated professional staring at walls while figuring out stuff not the same as low opportunity 10-year-old spacing on iTunes or whatever.
You said "beware an article that talks about..." or however you put it.
Yes, some of kids' downtime is useful, some isn't (i.e. 10-11 hours per day). So I don't know what your point actually was.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 12:53am
Sometimes my staring at a wall is a waste of time but even I cannot always tell right away whether it is or not. I guess that is my main point.
And being online is not necessarily downtime. If television has been found to be a social surrogate that provides a degree of belonging, how much more so is online social networking or role playing.
Will these children be better or worse off than the ones diligently preparing or being prepared for a collapsing socioeconomic system?
Who can really say. Certainly not me.
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 2:05am
Languages and grammar are easy for me. Math was harder for me. But not because I am a girl. My college trig teacher was seriously insecure. He made the class so hard only one person passed -- with a D . He lost his position and everyone had to take the class again. My replacement teacher was quite good. You could actually see how much she enjoyed teaching and making it easier for students to learn.
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 12:15am
I've seen with twin girls where one has a much more innate understanding of math and music than the other. But where the other one is overall much more "clever" in school and life and other topics. Who knows.
(I do think there's something of a reverse syndrome now, where normal boy physiology is now considered "hyperactive", so that girls may have an advantage in terms of scores and teacher tolerance - not sure how factual this is though, vs. urban myth - lots of "trends" are just creation of columnists with need for copy)
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 12:59am
Having the advantage of living in a long established community, it often fascinates me how mannerisms and traits are as heritable as physical characteristics. Makes me think that maybe some forms of knowledge are passed along with genes. In other words, the birth lottery explains a lot of the differences you describe.
by EmmaZahn on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 2:10am
there's a new field of neolamarckism or epigenetics, which from what I understand doesn't quite mean the environment or wishes direct inheritance, but that there's a second much more variable force on inheritance than matching up chromosomes, which is essentially how they're expressed.
(in Web terms, this might be thought of as the same content expressed through different CSS stylesheets for web browser, mobile phones, etc., except no one's writing the stylesheets for pre-determined effects, and there are perhaps a million variations in the expressions based on chemical & other variations rather than 5 stylesheets)
This may not be all that different from alcohol affecting fetal development, except that it's alcohol passed on in RNA messaging, rather than in the environment of the womb, so it can continue to express itself after birth.
As one layman who got poor scores in chemistry & biology's idiot attempt to describe. (though there are more naive explanations which is that epigenetics really is the false-conception-of-Lamarckism updated to show that the environment actually chooses favorable outcomes like long necks and shortened ears, just with a slightly different mechanism than expected.)
Perhaps this could expand into genetic/environmental influence on behavior, not just physical characteristics.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 5:42am