I've noticed a couple of interesting things in my classes over the past year. I'm beginning to believe that technology has become somewhat mundane to my students. In four classes, I've not had one student who's been "texting" while I was either lecturing, leading some discussion, or engaging them in some activity of their own. I'm sure it's not to last; I'm sure that once my composition class housed in one of our computer labs becomes accustomed to the computers that I'll see them on Facebook, any number of search engines, or trying to download something illegally.
But this past year I've seen a decline with the temptation of technology. It's as if there is so much technology with which students become redundantly bored that they find themselves in a kind of stasis. With a phone, computer, some kind of digital music device it seems students are overloaded with what to do. So they do nothing.
Ah ha! Now's my chance. I often like to suggest to students that they try to match what they want in technology with what they can do by themselves. Write a letter, go see someone and have a conversation, whistle a tune, or even hand write what they've done that day. It's fascinating to me how "in touch" people want to be and how "out of touch" they are with themselves. We need sense and feeling, smell and touch. I prefer a handshake to an email any day, and I'd prefer it even more after an absence of time. Perhaps Nature wanted us to sense the awareness of detachment from one another; it makes the moments we do have with each other so much more real.
Secondly, I believe the days of men wearing their pants lower than their underwear as if they are about to drop in front of us in on the wane. Huzzah! I see fewer and fewer samples of this on campus. What will the branders of boxer shorts ever do now?
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