The Learning Series — Technology — Bane or Boon

Technology improves the lives of people who can avoid being dominated by it and forced into debilitating addictions to it — FRANK KAUFMANN

CNN reported that “Email ‘hurts IQ more than pot’,” the Telegraph that “Twitter and Facebook could harm moral values” and the “Facebook and MySpace generation ‘cannot form relationships,” and the Daily Mail ran a piece on “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer.” Not a single shred of evidence underlies these stories, but they make headlines across the world because they echo our fears about new technology. There was one article titled ‘Is Google Making us stupid?’

My approach is to look at technology realistically. We should embrace what it can do for us and guard against some of the possible downsides. Technology gives us an opportunity to make learning more relevant, personalised and effective. In the same breath, we discuss the ways in which technology can distract our kids and what we should be doing to safeguard against this.