Internet was restored late yesterday afternoon, also announced on WRAL. I wonder if the loss of only Cable Television would have warranted a news alert. During the outage, my phone continued to provide me access to e-mail, but otherwise we were cut off.
With little else to do, I walked up to our neighborhood stores, about a mile from the house, to drop off a package, go to the bank, and then to do some grocery shopping. On my way back, it started to drizzle. Brenda called me on my mobile phone asking if I needed her to come out and get me. I was still four blocks from the house. I declined, because it was only a drizzle, and she replied that without Doppler radar, she could not see if there was harder rain on the way. She said that she felt blind.
It’s kind of an absurd statement, “I feel blind,” but at the same time, there is much to it. I remember when there were no satellites up in space looking down on our planet. Now, she can effectively, from her desk, see real-time weather patterns from space (and I from the mobile phone in my pocket), interact with people face-to-face around the world, circle the globe and zoom in to view buildings and local geographic features, often in great clarity, and so much more.
We can see and understand so much about our world. Yet we still misunderstand so much, and continue to fear and fight. I hope that our new eyes and our new ears will one day help us to learn to love.
Joyful holidays to everyone, and may the new year bring happiness, prosperity, and understanding to us all.
A pot of gold’s worth!
Every time this happens, I become completely aware of the transformation of the world and our lives. Truly, Internet access is the great flattner and great connector. Just imagine all of the kids who do not truly have access at school and have no access at home. Are they blind? Are their teachers? Hmmm..
You ask an important question here, Vicki. From the perspective of someone who grew up without the Internet or even computers, a child growing up today without such extravagances, seems less alarming.
However, when I think about yesterday’s experience in terms of the information landscape that we are becoming (have become) so dependent on, then our conclusion would be closer to what you suggest.
Students without convenient access to the Internet are blind — they are severely handicapped.
Likewise, teachers who are not using the Internet are equally handicapped. Are the handicapping their students?
Dave,
Absolutely they are handicapping their students, especially their students with disabilities. When you use digital information, it is flexible and therefore accessible to ALL learners. You can attach a voice (for those who need text-to-speech or are auditory learners), change the font size (for those who have limited vision), autosummarize the information (for those who are cognitively limited but need access to the same information as their peers) or allow the student to access the information independently (for those who benefit from repetition).
The Internet can be the great equalizer for our struggling learners…..
Dave:
I get your points, but this is what I fear. Four blocks from home, and rain on the way. In the days without mobile phones and Doppler radar we would have walked. Walked, and if the wind picked up it would have pushed our hair away from our face and the drop would have run down our nose. If it was cold we would have smelled the scent of snow in the air. If it poured rain we would have ducked into an unfamiliar store or taken refuge with a neighbor until it let up, yielding to the serendipity, rather than the practicality of having the car dispatched to bring us home.
There are times where I worry about the balance between being wired to the world and connected to myself and my community.
Steve,
You’re talking about another kind of blindness, an inability to see the opportunities for adventure, friendship, sharing, and to simply taste the flavors of life. Personally, unless it was health threatening (or unless I was carrying sugar in a paper bag), I would have declined my wife’s offer to come pick me up, and enjoyed the weather in exactly the way that you describe. But as I indicated in the blog, I clearly remember a time without cell phones and Doppler.
But the real question is, “Does opening our eyes to the time- and space-independent digital realm necessarily cost us our sight in the physical realm? In observing my own two children, my answer to that question is, “no!” — and I do not think that they are exceptional in this way. I believe that personal face-to-face interactions with people and personal interactions with our physical environment are intrinsic human needs. Certainly there are those who do not have social skills and are often ridiculed for it, to the point that they search for alternative ways to express themselves such as video games, comic books, TV, … there has aways been something for people to escape into.
I will admit that my children are not as eager to take a long walk in the woods or a thrilling sailboat ride as I am. But there is much that is different between all generations, and some of it always seems inappropriate to the previous generation.
The main point that I want to make here is that this is exactly the conversation that teachers need to be having, conversations that blend the new with the old, that value and figure out how to expose children to the value of past experiences and simultaneously recognize the new, place it into healthy and productive contexts, and help students to discover values and opportunities as explorers and experimenters. We must all have open eyes and open minds.
Thanks for the comment!
— dave —