Reflections on Student Trip

This post was originally written for my school's weekly staff newsletter, Bear Essentials, May 15, 2014.

At ECOO this year (I think this was the place) Jamie Casap (I think it was him) said that for today’s young people wifi and being connected is expected.  He likened it to electricity for everyone else.  No one alive today walks into a building and says “Hey!  They have lights in here!  I can see where I’m going!  This is awesome!”  We just expect it and are quite concerned when something happens to take it away.

For young people today, the ability to connect (wifi) is almost as expected. They are more confused and feel like their needs aren’t being met if it is not available, than they are surprised when it is.  I saw this with our students in Washington last week.  Everyone (OK, including me) expected that the hotels would have free wifi (I really resent having to pay for wifi in a hotel) - and they did, thankfully.  On our bus, one student noticed that there was another bus in Gettysburg that had free wifi on board. The comment wasn’t “hey, that’s cool.”  The comment was “hey, why don’t we?”  

What was interesting to me was that the ability to be connected wasn’t just about talking to their friends at home, or posting instagram photos, it was also about verifying information and answering questions they had.  They heard things on tour and wanted more information, or wanted to find out if what they heard could be validated.  One group desperately needed to know who the 3rd Prime Minister of Canada was. (They didn’t know all 22, but they really wanted to know the 3rd for some reason.)  When at the next lunch break they found wifi, and discovered the answer they came back and let us know - because obviously Nelson and Unger should know this as Canadian history teachers.

I think about questions my friends and I may have had on tour and I see them as fleeting wonderings.  By the time we got somewhere we could have looked up the information (a library or back at school), we wouldn’t have remembered or cared anymore.  

It’s not a big deal, but it goes to the assumption that information and connectivity is ubiquitous or should be.  I think that’s amazing.

BTW, did you know that the UN ruled that internet connection is a basic human right in June 2011?  (http://mashable.com/2012/07/06/internet-human-right/)