Unit 2 Draft

 Unit 2 Draft

Question: How does technology currently affect students' learning at the college level?

Technology is an extensive and rapidly growing branch of knowledge constantly producing digital discoveries. It has impacted all facets of the world, but a community that we are all apart of that it has impacted is education and specifically the college community. Technology has largely impacted students and the way they learn in college due to the tools constantly being created and therefore the opportunites, yet also the distractions and misinformation constantly circulating too. It is important to be aware of both the positive and negative aspects of technology and how they affect students' learning in college, and to use this knowledge to be self-aware and make sure we are staying self-sufficient students and members of society. 

    The previous article mentioned that during the covid-19 pandemic, social media acted as a space for people to come together and find common ground or pursue relationships even from isolation. This is true, a TedTalk by Michael Wesch discusses how social media, "is what allows us to connect with one another, and connect with each other in different ways depending on the medium" (4:43, Wesch). However, in this same TedTalk, he explains way that social media has a negative effect on in-person learning. He explains that he is a professor at Kansas State University, and one day in class they did a survey about it, and a common response was something along the lines of, "I facebook through every class", or "I bring my laptop to class, but I'm not working on school" (2:38)....

   There is a fine yet blurry line between utilizing the tools that technology has given us and still being self-sufficient individuals or abusing that technology and relying on it too heavily. College is a pivotal moment in young adults' lives. We figure out what career we potentially want to pursue and take classes to prepare us. We also gain imperative life skills throughout the process. Technology in many ways acts as an asset to this phase of life and what we hope to get out of it. Probably very obvious but, computers, iPads, projectors, and digital textbooks are all normal in our lives, but take a moment to think about learning without all of them; school would be very different. We must be grateful for digital discoveries and the convenience it has given us, but just like how social media can be a distraction, there are tools that technology has given us that can be easily abused. AI technology is a great example of a recent technological discovery that if used improperly, can be detrimental to students' learning. AI technology is not limited to writing, but for the purpose of this topic, that is what will be discussed.  AI writing assistance is a very recent discovery in technology. It stands for artificial intelligence writing assistance, and for many platforms, it is simply described as a technology that helps users in the writing process with grammar, research, tone-checking, and localization. Grammarly is a popular writing assistance platform, and it is even something that I use in writing assignments like this or when writing emails to professors. However, an article by the New Yorker discusses how AI technology now has the knowledge to write entire essays including quotations and citations when given a simple prompt. The author writes about the newest project released by OpenAI, which is called, "GPT-3—the abbreviation stands for “Generative Pre-Trained Transformer,” —a pattern-recognition artificial intelligence that “learns” from huge caches of Internet text to generate believable responses to queries. The interface is refreshingly simple: you write questions and statements to ChatGPT, and it spits back remarkably coherent, if occasionally hilariously wrong, answers" (Kang)...

    We can see that technology has done so much for us, from enhancing our learning environments to continuing education through a global epidemic, we are so fortunate for the convenience it has caused in our lives. Nonetheless, we can also see that without discipline, technology can be detrimental to education and creating generations of self-supporting inidviduals. Why is this topic of technology affecting school important to us? As college students or professors, it is important to be self-aware of how we use technology and whether we utilize it as a tool for our learning or if it is hindering our abilities. It is important to be aware of what technology has done for us, including increased cross-cultural communications and advanced research and learning tools, but it is also important to admit that aspects of technology like social media and AI if used improperly, can negatively affect our pursuit of knowledge. 

Works Cited 

Kang, Jay Caspian. “Could an A.I. Chatbot Rewrite My Novel?” The New Yorker, 9 Dec. 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/could-an-ai-chatbot-rewrite-my-novel.

Wesch, Michael. “TEDxKC - Michael Wesch - from Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able.” YouTube,                 YouTube, 12 Oct. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaAHv4UTI8.