The Age of Technology

Ok, so I may have jumped the gun on this assignment by reading the posts of my classmates, but I didn't get to far on that. I was perplexed about Bryan's post because I was sitting here having read all the resources that were provided, had been brainstorming that I was going to write about the different types of websites that I think are most conducive to an actual learning environment, and I was completely blindsided. I was originally gung-hoe about all this techno-gadgety stuff for the classroom, but I think Bryan has a point. The puzzle pieces fit together. The generation that has or is growing up with all this new techy stuff is going to be significantly behind socially than those previous generations. Sure blogs, chat rooms, and text messaging are efficient ways of communicating with a larger audience, but it has trained our students to be withdrawn in person and unable to appropriately communicate on the fly. They are only improving their communication skills via technology and not actually developing any personable social skills. The editorial literature by Ferdig stated "...when students were not in a pedagogical environment that supported interaction, students tended towards 'off-task' and yet social behavior such as instant messaging." Within the text it almost felt as if Ferdig was condoning this kind of "off-task" behavior on the basis that the lesson wasn't stimulating enough. I am by no means saying this is unorthodox, because I do feel as teachers we hold a responsibility to create and impletent interesting and interactive lessons, but in reality it is obsurd to me that some will enable students to participate in off-task behavior simply on this basis. My question is, how do we direct our students to a more appropriate type of socializing when in the academic setting. For example, say you catch a student text-messaging in class, should we excuse this defiant behavior and blame ourselves for not being interesting enough to sustain the interest of this particular student? I know there must be a happy-medium to this new age of technology, however, the battles that will lead us there are long and arduous.