Considering the Impact of Technology on Communication: In School and among Friends

When I attended university in the late 1960s, studying actuarial sciences, we had to comprehend the languages that the huge computers in those days used: Fortran and Cobol, among others. This involved punching cards that were used to give the computer instructions. By the mid-1970s, computers were smaller, desktop machines-but still not too easy to use. Not everyone could afford buying one to have at home. Schools had some computers-but just for administrative tasks, not for students to use. Later on, e-mail appeared as an alternative to the so-called snail-mail. In minutes, or even faster, another person could get one's message. Eventually one could even send attachments, faster and better than the fax that nowadays has almost disappeared.Today, we have systems that allow humans to communicate better and faster. The social networks are many, starting with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and I do not know how many more. As teachers, we have always encountered work that a student has copied from a friend or from a book- but at least they had to read the original and then write the content out themselves. Today, copying is effortless.I started teaching in 1979, retiring in 2011. I had students with different social levels and, of course, at the beginning there was no Internet. From 1979 to 1984, I taught at a technical school; my students were mainly workers in industry who wanted to improve and advance to a better position within their companies. Other students were not in the workforce yet, pursuing a technical career instead of a university degree. Communication was face-to-face with their teachers, their friends, and their families. When they were at home, they used the telephone, a landline, and usually just one line shared by the whole family. They had to read and write to prepare their class work. In class, discussions took place with participation from almost all of the students. It was fun to work with them, they were really willing to learn, and they attended school because they wanted to, not because it was expected of them.From 1984 to 1989, I changed schools, working at the University of Guadalajara (U de G) in the 'Preparatoria 7' school (in the United States this corresponds to 10th through 12th grade). Students were all teenagers but came from different social levels. The school was public and famous because of its high academic level (the current director is a fellow DKG member).In 1989, I transitioned from teaching at the 'preparatoria' to work in a research department, also a part of the University of Guadalajara. In the afternoons, I began teaching in a private school, also in the 10th through 12th grade level, but this time the students came mostly from the middle-upper and higher social strata. The first years I was there, almost no one had a computer at home, and the school did not have computers for the students. When I retired in 2011, all the students had a personal computer, maybe an iPad, plus their cell phone, and the school had two computer rooms in which students could take classes or spend some time for their personal use. The library was the last area to have computers for the students, and once computers were installed, the students did not go there to look for books but went straight to the computers. All students liked to use the Internet, with the various applications and access to the social networks.It was not the same with the teachers. Although some adopted the new technologies, others refused to learn. I was among the former group; we wanted to learn and, of course, students were ahead of us on this front and taught us many things.But new problems started to appear in our classes. Students presented their work without even reading and, in some cases, not even writing, resorting to a simple copy and paste. The result was no comprehension of what they were presenting; if questioned, they did not have any idea of what they did. The first Web page on which they found some information was the one they used. …