Reflection on Paideia Seminar

   The article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr gave a perspective about the internet that I have not thought very much about.  I was surprised at the ways that some people view technology and it's influence on the way that we live and think.  It was eye-opening to read about Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it accessible to everyone.  What hits me is that Google and many other companies are controlling the information process.  They control what we see and how we see it.  I was also very surprised to find out that the more we click and view pages on the internet the more information each company gains from us.  "It's in their economic interest to drive us to distraction" (p.63).  So, is the internet making us stupid?  Who is thinking for us?

  I believe that this issue is not just the issue of how the internet is used and managed but a cultural issue.  We are fed information through many venues, from bill boards on the side of the road, to the radio commercial playing on our radio alarm when we wake up, to the ad that pops up on the internet.  Do these pieces of information dictate how we think?  I believe that we have a choice to make.  We can choose to think critically about how we view these pieces of information.  We can also choose to listen to the information without thinking for ourselves and become conplacent.  We as teachers have an important role as we discuss the Internet, technology and the information that students are bombarded with daily.

  The Paideia Seminar today in class helped me to digest and think more critically about the article.  I realized that it is our job as teachers to teach student how to think deeply.  We need to teach higher level thinking skils.  If we do this then they will have the ability to digest and filter information that they read.  They will have the ability to balance the use of the Internet and the information on it.  In this way we are not allowing others to think for us but we are enabling our students to use technology to the fullest potential to aid them to become more intelligent and use the information to think more deeply and more critically instead of the opposite effect.