Haonan Kuang UWP22
We have many names: Generation Zs, millennials, digital natives, net generations, trend spotters, futurists, attention-deficit-disorder generations… While the scientific and technological development is rapid nowadays, millennials are growing up with technology. Gradually, millennials are in colleges and technology does have effects on them during their academic lives. I used to believe technology was the best invention. However, there should be a limit for using technology as people, especially millennial students, should not be led blindly and only enjoy the convenience and entertainment given by technology without focusing on striving for their own futures.
Somehow I agree with the pinion of Marc Prensky, an education specialist, in his article “Listen to the Natives” that “schools are stuck in the twentieth century. Students have rushed into the twenty-first century (Black, 2010).” There are two things that have changed over time. The first is how students use information to learn, and the second is how they need to be taught. In our UWP22 class, all the students were distributed into six groups to do separate surveys about whether or not college students themselves think technology benefits their studies. Our group did an electronic survey and had received 24 responses in total with 95.8% female, aged from 17 to 20 among 14 different majors. Most of them are Chinese students, but we also have respondents from Latino, Vietnamese and American. Overall, we found that about 84.2% of them agree or strongly agree that technology is beneficial to their studies in college and 70.3% of them think technology will play a significant role in the field they want to pursue.
Assuredly, technology has benefited college students with all the efficiency it has brought to them, for instance: Googling questions whenever they want, sending e-mails wherever they are and looking up in the dictionary whatever they need…Using technology in colleges also brings efficiency. In our survey results, about half of students prefer to have lectures with technology like PowerPoint and iclickers because they can accept knowledge quickly due to visual learning. So, millennial students are actually trying to take control of learning in a better way. Therefore, they are a generation that earn to succeed, too. But now that they like multimedia as text, videos and sound, it is already a “multi-sensory experience (Carlson, 2005)” when students see the professor, hear his teaching, and read on the blackboard in lectures.
In fact, most situations are double-edged swords; even the best things turn bad if they exceed the extent. Millennial students are smart but impatient. In our survey, 37.5% students admitted that they feel nervous when they leave smart phones or computers behind for a while and the most difficult thing about being a student these days is to “sit through a class lecture without being able to check e-mail, surf the Web, or listen to music (Black, 2010).” Naomi Baron, the American University linguistics professor, also notices that instructors “can lecture for only 10 or 15 minutes before they have to break for a group discussion or an opportunity for the students to talk (Carlson, 2005),” which means college students now have very short attention spans. Nevertheless, the core mission for colleges and professors is to teach students “how to think on their own, how to be contemplative (Carlson, 2005).” Even if it is true that work in groups have effects sometimes, there are situations that students should study by themselves only. But all the temptations from technology disperse students’ concentration, and they cannot forget the momentary happiness technology gives. The recoil force of using technology is strong, so students with low ability of self-control will be easily carried off by technology. Hence, the tendency of giving up traditional teaching to cater to millennials’ character of getting results immediately need to transform in time. They should “integrate technology as a learning tool, not as replacement for effective teaching (Nevid, 2011).” In fact, it is also suitable for learning and studying as we are talking about technology’s influence on students.
However, using technologies has further interruptions. Students are bombarded constantly with information from many sources, which causes fragmented reading, meaning people can receive lots of information and data from websites, Social Medias, short messages in their technology receivers, but they prefer to read information with a broken pattern or even just read titles. So, people need to evaluate the information they acquire with their understanding, experience and ability. Millennials are growing up with this environment, and they are supposed to gradually obtain these kinds of “sophistication (Black, 2010)” in colleges. The reality is that most millennials lack many critical or analytical skills. For them, learning has become a “plug-and-play experience (Black, 2010).” Instead of reading an entire chapter in a textbook, they only focus on the results and build knowledge by jumping from one internet site to another to discover answers. This “mediated immersion (Black, 2010)” way of learning goes against with the original intention of education for helping students gain skills to survive successfully in society. Consequently, millennials should realize its harm and correct it before losing themselves in technology.
To sum up, although individuals in a group have differences, the propensity is mostly the same. Instead of criticizing the disadvantages of technology, we want to warn millennials to use technology in a proper way and not to be controlled by it. “They are more likely to succeed if they have clear expectations and guidelines for success. (Monaco & Martin, 2007)” So, such a collaborative and social generation shall create a brighter future once the millennials stop giggling toward smart technology all the time.
Works Cited
Black, Alison “Generation Y: Who They Are and How They Learn” Educational Horizons,
88.2 (2010): 92-101. Web
Carlson, Scott “The Net Generation Goes to College” The Chronicle of Higher Education,
52.7 (2005): A34. Web
Nevid, Jeff “Teaching the Millennials” Observer, 24.5 (2011). Web
Monaco, Michele & Martin, Malissa “The Millennial Student: A New Generation
of Learners”Athletic Training Journal 2 (2007): 42-46. Web
UWP 22 “Class Survey,” U.C. Davis March 2016. Print.
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