Will the original smartphone go out of business?
I give the same assignment to my high school students every year: find your Body Mass Index (BMI). Students break up into partners and weigh themselves, then take each other's height using the tape-measure-on-the-wall method. From there they use a BMI chart to find their number, using their own data, and they fill that info in on a worksheet. They're also asked whether or not they agree with their classification, according to the chart: underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese.
The main obstacle of this assignment for more and more students each year is calculating their height in inches. When I first started teaching in the early part of this century, many kids didn't know how to convert inches into feet and inches, so they'd know their height. Now it is most students who can't do this. I walk them through it so they can know how to find the answer themselves. The dialogue goes like this:
Student: Ms. Favor, what does 64 inches mean? (Or) It says I'm 6 foot 4.
Me: That's your height in inches. Do you know how to get feet and inches from that number?
Student: No.
Me: How many inches are in a foot?
Student: 12.
Me: What's 12 times five?
At this point the student pauses to think about it for a few seconds, or they look embarrassed and say they don't know, and I have to guide them through the equation.
But this year a kid did something different: he pulled out his smart phone and started to open the calculator feature. He was born in 2004, so that's likely the only way he knows.
"Hold on, Cesar," I said, and pointed to my head. "I want you to use the original smart phone."
We have become an outsourced species. Instead of looking inward for answers about our own intelligence and our own bodies, young people in particular are conditioned to look outward for answers. It has made for a large generation gap.
When older people were growing up, there were calculators. But they were taught to do basic math, for example, by hand. The same was true for learning to write in cursive. The fundamental idea behind such teaching methods was that the process in finding the answer was important. But in today's world of technology and standardized testing in schools, having the right answer is the only thing that matters, and the emphasis is on speed and convenience. Automatically, we are trained to seek the immediate resolution to our issue, and our bet is almost always on a source outside of our own brains.
If you're older, as I am, and are concerned about this inward-to-outward focus shift, you are labeled old-fashioned. I especially wonder: at what price, the body?
I had an interesting conversation with a young man at the gym last week. Evan, 26, was working out next to me, and we got to talking about running. I have been a runner since 1982. He is relatively new to it, and plans to compete in road races of steadily-increasing duration until he works his way up to a marathon. He was inquiring about training runs, and then he asked, "what is your peak heart rate?"
He probably meant target heart rate, which is what we have always called it. In either case, I don't know, and I told him that. He squinched his eyes at me, genuinely puzzled. Then he pulled up his shirt to reveal a small device strapped to his chest: a heart rate monitor. He said he wears it everywhere.
"You know what monitor I use?" I asked him, and then held up my left wrist, pointing to the $22 Casio sports watch that I bought from Target.
He nodded.
"What does that monitor?" Evan asked.
My eyes bugged slightly when I realized he was serious.
"It's a timer," I said. "It keeps track of the time that I run every day."
I explained to him that I had lost interest in road races long ago, and that I have run for health and mental wellness for most of my life, anyway. Some days I feel good and run faster; other days I might feel so-so, and while the speed might be slower, the run always gets done, which is the most important thing. When I go to the doctor, my blood pressure is always somewhere between 95-110 over 50-60, and then I leave and don't go back for a while.
Evan listened, but the look on his face told me that he didn't fully grasp what I was saying. And in a world of fitness devices and fitness apps, I'm sure I sounded antiquated to him.
There are dozens and dozens of fitness apps. They measure workout intensity, create workouts, track progress toward goals, and more. Pedometers are outdated, as smart phones can now track daily steps. You don't even have to understand or plan a workout for yourself; just input your data and the app spits out a personalized plan just for you.
I've always enjoyed constructing my own workouts, and adjusting them based on how I felt and on how quickly I was advancing toward my goals. There is nothing wrong with having a fitness trainer or an app devise a workout, but putting full trust in a device to tell you how you're feeling is a problem. It's critically important to be in touch with your own body. Only you can truly know the answers to questions like: Should I push through or ease up? Am I making progress? Should I change up? You should be able to figure these things out for yourself by tuning into your body, rather than relying on an outside source that doesn't live where you do.
This new way of outsourcing our thinking is still new. As recently as 10-15 years ago, people did not rely so heavily on devices to think for them. I have trepidation about this - especially since people like myself who still like to use their own minds are sometimes characterized as outdated. We are in unchartered territory and don't know how this electronics revolution will go. Are we on the way to a world that looks like an episode of "Star Trek," or will people retain at least some of the use of their own minds?
Personally, I pray that more people opt for less technology.
The main obstacle of this assignment for more and more students each year is calculating their height in inches. When I first started teaching in the early part of this century, many kids didn't know how to convert inches into feet and inches, so they'd know their height. Now it is most students who can't do this. I walk them through it so they can know how to find the answer themselves. The dialogue goes like this:
Student: Ms. Favor, what does 64 inches mean? (Or) It says I'm 6 foot 4.
Me: That's your height in inches. Do you know how to get feet and inches from that number?
Student: No.
Me: How many inches are in a foot?
Student: 12.
Me: What's 12 times five?
At this point the student pauses to think about it for a few seconds, or they look embarrassed and say they don't know, and I have to guide them through the equation.
But this year a kid did something different: he pulled out his smart phone and started to open the calculator feature. He was born in 2004, so that's likely the only way he knows.
"Hold on, Cesar," I said, and pointed to my head. "I want you to use the original smart phone."
We have become an outsourced species. Instead of looking inward for answers about our own intelligence and our own bodies, young people in particular are conditioned to look outward for answers. It has made for a large generation gap.
When older people were growing up, there were calculators. But they were taught to do basic math, for example, by hand. The same was true for learning to write in cursive. The fundamental idea behind such teaching methods was that the process in finding the answer was important. But in today's world of technology and standardized testing in schools, having the right answer is the only thing that matters, and the emphasis is on speed and convenience. Automatically, we are trained to seek the immediate resolution to our issue, and our bet is almost always on a source outside of our own brains.
If you're older, as I am, and are concerned about this inward-to-outward focus shift, you are labeled old-fashioned. I especially wonder: at what price, the body?
I had an interesting conversation with a young man at the gym last week. Evan, 26, was working out next to me, and we got to talking about running. I have been a runner since 1982. He is relatively new to it, and plans to compete in road races of steadily-increasing duration until he works his way up to a marathon. He was inquiring about training runs, and then he asked, "what is your peak heart rate?"
He probably meant target heart rate, which is what we have always called it. In either case, I don't know, and I told him that. He squinched his eyes at me, genuinely puzzled. Then he pulled up his shirt to reveal a small device strapped to his chest: a heart rate monitor. He said he wears it everywhere.
"You know what monitor I use?" I asked him, and then held up my left wrist, pointing to the $22 Casio sports watch that I bought from Target.
He nodded.
"What does that monitor?" Evan asked.
My eyes bugged slightly when I realized he was serious.
"It's a timer," I said. "It keeps track of the time that I run every day."
I explained to him that I had lost interest in road races long ago, and that I have run for health and mental wellness for most of my life, anyway. Some days I feel good and run faster; other days I might feel so-so, and while the speed might be slower, the run always gets done, which is the most important thing. When I go to the doctor, my blood pressure is always somewhere between 95-110 over 50-60, and then I leave and don't go back for a while.
Evan listened, but the look on his face told me that he didn't fully grasp what I was saying. And in a world of fitness devices and fitness apps, I'm sure I sounded antiquated to him.
There are dozens and dozens of fitness apps. They measure workout intensity, create workouts, track progress toward goals, and more. Pedometers are outdated, as smart phones can now track daily steps. You don't even have to understand or plan a workout for yourself; just input your data and the app spits out a personalized plan just for you.
I've always enjoyed constructing my own workouts, and adjusting them based on how I felt and on how quickly I was advancing toward my goals. There is nothing wrong with having a fitness trainer or an app devise a workout, but putting full trust in a device to tell you how you're feeling is a problem. It's critically important to be in touch with your own body. Only you can truly know the answers to questions like: Should I push through or ease up? Am I making progress? Should I change up? You should be able to figure these things out for yourself by tuning into your body, rather than relying on an outside source that doesn't live where you do.
This new way of outsourcing our thinking is still new. As recently as 10-15 years ago, people did not rely so heavily on devices to think for them. I have trepidation about this - especially since people like myself who still like to use their own minds are sometimes characterized as outdated. We are in unchartered territory and don't know how this electronics revolution will go. Are we on the way to a world that looks like an episode of "Star Trek," or will people retain at least some of the use of their own minds?
Personally, I pray that more people opt for less technology.
Comments
Post a Comment