I'm not trying to rub it in that I'm spending two weeks on the beach in Puerto Rico with 30 of my closest family and friends (pina colada anyone!), I'm just sharing my observations of my mini case study...I'm here with a diverse group including sibling pairs from Medway, MA and Puducah, TX which presents an interesting opportunity for young adult interactions. The 9 and 12 year olds from MA attend a private school outside of Boston where their parents teach and are inundated with social and school related technology devices. The 11 and 15 year olds from TX attend a public school with 20 students per grade and live on a ranch where their Mom stays home and their Dad works for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Association. They are all amazing, kind, honest and fun-loving young adults who share a family tree but not much else!
We were talking about school and homework and I learned that although both schools have computers to use for research and projects, the Medway kids also use computers for social networking (the 9 year old boy exchanges information on-line with his friends about their "webkins" while the 12 year old girl has her own facebook account), they both said they are on-line several times a day between home and school. The Paducah girls do not have e-mail access from school (it is blocked) and have no computer at home but talked about using the internet for school projects under their teachers' guidance.
It was the Medway kids who seemed surprised and incredulous about their differences, asking their cousins how they talked to their friends after school or now while they were away. My Paducah neices explained that they hang out with their friends after school through 4-H or by going home from school with one another and Kylie (age 11) showed us a package she was sending a friend in Paducah with pictures, shells, an umbrella from a drink and get this---a hand written letter!
For his preschool class homework my son Connor is supposed to journal on-line (I am to type his narration into a template e-mailed by the teacher) but we were so inspired by Kylie's package that we are making an executive decision to change the assignment! Instead of typing, I have printed out the template and Connor (with the help of his creative cousins) is drawing pictures of the beach, gluing treasures on the paper to make a collage and handwriting letters to recount his trip. Our Medway cousins have joined in and are making scrapbooks to show their friends and teachers too!
We aren't taking a complete vacation from technology though because the Medway cousins are helping their Paducah kin to set up webkin and facebook accounts that they can check on the computers available at their public library, and we are all getting "better connected" and learning so much from one another!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Fascinating stuff. First, I have to say that the fact you are blogging from Puerto Rico is really cool. You are immersed in family, teen-hood, and technology. Very cool!
I love the fact that the teens and pre-teens are talking to each other about their experiences. That is social networking face to face. I think we sometimes forget that social networking isn't just an online phenomenon.
I'm also wondering how your younger family members are handling not having technology - the ones that are more tech focused - as readily available as when they are home. Any kind of withdrawl?
Post a Comment