Smart Kids and Smart Phones

You’re sitting in front of TV one evening and someone asks, “Where is Kazakhstan?” What do you do if you don’t immediately know the answer? Ask Google? If you just ask Google you will be missing out on so much. Most worryingly, you will be missing out on giving your plastic brain an opportunity to improve itself, to develop new neuronal pathways and to strengthen the ones it already has. If, before saying, “Ok, Google,” you try and think about it for a while, you will be giving your brain the food and exercise it needs to thrive.

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You will call on memory to remind you of all the things you have heard and read about Kazakhstan in the past, in newspapers, on TV or on the internet.  You will sift through those memories, comparing them and discriminating between the ones that help Smart Kids and Smart Phones Helping Students Communicate Smarter and those that don’t. You might try and visualise a map of Europe and the Middle East and see if you can associate the placement of Kazakhstan with the placement of other countries that you do know about. Perhaps you will remember the old atlas on the shelf under the coffee table and you will pull it out and search for Kazakhstan. While you are looking in the atlas, you may well notice where numbers of other countries, as well as Kazakhstan, are located. You will see the names of major cities, and if the map is a relief map, you discover Kazakhstan is largely made up of desert areas.

Someone else in the room might know a little more than you and together you might be able to come up with an answer. There are so many good things you can do for your brain before asking Google. Yes, Google will probably post a map with a little red marker for Kazakhstan and it might feel like a great shortcut way to what you found in the atlas. But look at all the things your brain missed out on doing: remembering, comparing, associating, filtering, connecting, visualising, browsing and thinking interdependently with others. Just as eating a diet of mushy ‘pre-chewed’ food would risk the health of your teeth, a regime of fast facts and information via Google risks the health and development of your brain. Google is great. But don’t let it replace your brain! Kids are very social beings. They love to chat, gossip, tease, conspire and share the highs and the lows of their lives. With the ubiquitous presence of the smart phone, they can continue to do this no matter where they might be, and even if they are on their own. The latest scuttlebutt about school can be shared and chatted about by youngsters alone in their bedrooms or together in the school yard.

Noticing an unnerving silence and stillness in playgrounds and worried about distraction in classrooms, some schools have banned the smartphone on the playground, in the classroom or in the school altogether. When this happened, conversations and games reappeared on playgrounds and kids started paying more attention in class.Have you ever talked to your students about the benefits and pitfalls of texting as a form of communication? If not, it’s time. Too many of our kids are hurt as a result of misinterpreted text and chat messages. Friendships are fractured, rumours are started and spread, and misunderstandings can take off like forest fires when we don’t understand the nature of texting.Just recently I saw a magnificent production of Tosca by the Australian Opera. If you had asked me in a text message what I thought of it, I would probably have responded with, “great,” and I might have added a thumbs up emoji. What you would not have seen was the way my hand punctuated the air as I wrote, “great.” You would not have heard the awe in my tone, the gasp that preceded my word, nor would you have seen the look of admiration and delight that flooded my face as I recalled the evening.Research suggests that when we are communicating attitudes or emotions, approximately 7% is communicated by the words and 93% by the nonverbal aspects of communication – facial expression, tone of voice, gestures and the like. In my text response to your question about the opera,you missed 93% of the message.It seems our youngsters are giving up on spoken telephone conversations. They much prefer to text. They have lightning thumbs, and the messages fly back and forth at an amazing speed. These text conversations can be short or sometimes very, very long. And the longer the conversation, the more likely it is that misunderstandings, misinterpretations and false impressions will be built and expanded upon. Why? Because every time a message is sent, 93% of its meaning is missing! Imagine trying to read a novel or a letter with 93% of the letters missing.

In an attempt to overcome this paucity of information, we insert emojis and gifs. They help a little, but not much. Perhaps you send me a text letting me know you passed a very hard exam, one you had worried yourself sick about. I may send back a message that says, “Well done,” and includes a thumbs up emoji and a heart. But if you were here with me, you would have seen the expression on my face that showed I understood your relief, one that expressed the pride I felt. And you would have known the confidence I felt in you as I gave you a bear hug of appreciation. Instead? Just a couple of words and two small symbols. It’s a frequently used exercise in drama classes to say the word “yes” in as many ways as possible, implying as many different meanings as possible. The range is amazing. But in a text, there is only the word. You work out the meaning for yourself, and with no nonverbal cues to help you, there is every chance you will get it wrong.Why is this so important? Understanding language usage is part of every English class. This form of language is in common usage and is growing. We have a responsibility to include an understanding of texting language when we discuss language usage in class. Our students need to understand the weaknesses that exist in text conversations. We can encourage them to save the text chat for the factual, the trivial and for what it was designed: short messages and quick chats.Help your students understand that if they want to talk about something that involves the exchange of attitudes and the expression of feelings, subjects that have some depth and nuance, it is better to call one another and speak on their smartphone. Or better still, talk face to face. If the conversation is worth having, it deserves 100% of the communication process, not just 7%.

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Pat Buoncristiani


Pat has been a classroom teacher, a teachers college lecturer and a school principal. She has extensive experience training educators in early literacy development, behaviour management and the development of thinking based curricula. She is a certified Habits of Mind trainer and a consultant with McREL Australia. Pat has written Developing Mindful Students, Skilful Thinkers, Thoughtful Schools. You can learn more at www.ThinkingandLearningInConcert.org or follow her blog at www.ThinkingInTheDeepEnd. wordpress.com