Due to the nature of nature our evolutionary characteristic to sit and conserve energy has lead to a serious dependency on the quick and easy. What we experience in our everyday lives is not at all anywhere close to what our original ancestors had to work with. Think about this - if you were to travel back in time 50,000 years and grab an ancient Egyptian or an Australian Aborigine and bring them back to our time they would be able to drive, use an ipad, text and eventually communicate just like us. The reality is that we used to have to work our ass off to get the necessary materials for our survival - and taking a break was rarely an option -- so when it was available we took advantage of it. In fact we are adapted to love chillin! it means we can save energy in case a tiger or hippo tries to eat us. If its fast, easy and smooth we as humans likey likey.
Now if we look at the concept of instant gratification in relation to the presence of communicative technology in our students lives a question arises: how can we adapt our policies and pedagogy to co-evolve with this transition of communication practices and experiences?
Its a losing battle - we can't fight the presence of cell phone use in our schools. The main issue is that students use these tools for negative purposes --to cheat, talk, bully, distract...
How does a school community compete with this reality?
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