Adolescence is a tumultuous level wherein young people strive to know their selves better. From a period when they are under the loving care and attention of their parents, they have become reliant with them for almost all their needs. However, asserting their freedom in these preceding levels may be limited by choosing the clothes they would like to wear or heading to a friend's house on some days. In Erikson's Levels of Psychosocial Development, children are in the Personal information vs. Id Diffusion stage. It is a challenging time of tests limits, increasing more freedom and establishing a fresh identity. There types of surface the necessity to clarify self-identity, life goals and life's interpretation, and failure to accomplish a sense of identity results role bafflement (Erikson, 1963)
Adolescents face many issues in this specifically sensitive stage in their lives. These are fraught with so many conditions that influence their thinking, alternatives and conducts. Adolescence is an extremely trying time. It really is when individuals battle to create their own individuality when confronted with changes and problems which come their way. Not merely are they altering to physical changes, but also emotional and cultural changes as well. For a few, there exists more to it when compared to a adjustment to change, as some factors gravely impact their institution performance.
Technology is a very important factor that adolescents gravitate to. The countless features of devices never stop to impress them, as if we were holding new toys and games they can continually explore. In their perennial search for their sense of self-identity, they could explore a variety of things until they finally learn where their hearts lead them. Technology is an instrument that can take them there.
Technology for Learning
Progress dictates that folks adapt to its changes so that they will never be left behind. The view that modern advancements in information technology would greatly profit learners is one that is being upheld in most schools and universities. Based on the Country wide Academy of Sciences (1995), academic institutions recognize the need for students to be properly well prepared for the work environment in the foreseeable future and take benefit of the information revolution in upgrading skills and understanding of the youth. That is why schools aid learning using technologies in assisting students learn how to work cooperatively in gathering, inspecting and utilizing information.
Information technology is a double-edged sword that may be a boon or a bane to education. Traditionalists cannot stop time from continue with technological breakthroughs, yet maintain that students need to be trained traditional methods that contain functioned well in growing an individual's thinking a long time before the birth of it. Nowadays, online learning has managed to get possible for students to access all the information they need on certain issues. The web, being very supportive of learning seems to have expected that learner support can come in many forms such as learner-to-learner, learner-to-instructor, instructor-to-learner, and learner-to-expert relationships. Anderson & Elloumi (2004) contend that aside from these, ways of promote learner-context conversation to translate to true to life experience since it allows learners to build up personal knowledge and construct real interpretation from the information.
Information and computer technology make online students connect to facilitators through email or webchats and using their peers in chatrooms or message boards. They get to receive revisions from notifications or email. You will discover support services available to online students to ensure that their professional goals and current functions are matched. Ludwig-Hardman & Dunlap (2003) dispute that "This relationship with potential students not only helps them feel immediately linked with the learning community, but the diagnostic activities help them think about their learning goals and strategies, an activity important to self-directed learning" (para. 18). A perfect online learning system will be based on a plan that moves from a full understanding of two basic principles: the needs of the designed students, and the learning outcomes of the course or program (i. e. , the data, skills, and features that students want) (Anderson & Elloumi, 2004). It is different from traditional learning for the reason that "classroom experiences focus on critical thinking, teamwork, bargain, and communication-the skills appreciated in today's work environment" (National Academy of Sciences, 1995, para. 12). The pupil takes a more active role in his learning while the teacher steps back merely to guide the training process and not to spoon-feed information.
The youth are fortunate to own such conveniences within their reach at the moment. As soon as the nineties, the ASKS (asynchronous knowledge posting) prototype has already been designed to make learning more accessible even for individuals who are unable to come out of the comfort of their homes and venture in to the world credited to a number of reasons. It uses discussion boards with capabilities characteristic of most group decision support systems (Nunamaker, Dennis, Valacich, Vogel, & George, 1991). Learners and trainers access the machine directly via the net. The discussion board is the automobile used to connect each one's applying for grants certain concerns related to the lessons. The Country wide Academy of Sciences (1995) reiterates that the purpose of ASKS is to foster communities of lifelong learners who all value intellect and co-operation.
On the other side, there is still a camp that refuses to support this ongoing information trend and still feels in the traditional methods to instruct learners and that does not include expediting the training process with man-made means (Himmelfarb, 1996). They believe that the computer's swiftness does not modify to the rate of the comprehension of intricate ideas of students. Basic academics skills should still be taught the traditional way so that children develop the critical thinking capacity to interpret and understand the volume of information they'll be overwhelmed with in the future (Himmelfarb, 1996). As it is, the media or hypermedia engaged may already divert their focus on the essential information that educational materials want to convey to them. "Even worse, the constant contact with an array of texts, sounds, and images that often are only tangentially related to the other person is scarcely conducive to the cultivation of reasonable, rational, systematic behaviors of thought" (Himmelfarb, 1996, para. 9). This implies the high and fast information sputtered from the internet or software programs are indiscriminate of a topic's value over another, as one press of an integral provides same impact and focus on all subject areas available. Whereas in more traditional tools such as literature, a chapter or two may be dedicated to more important subject areas authors deem highly significant for a learner to imbibe.
Known as the info highway, the internet may offer a multitude of road signs or symptoms leading towards any issue of interest. The risk is perfect for students to be shown the way to dangerous grounds. Constrained sites for children and children may now be easily got around with, and these websites may move the children towards a dark world which imbue bad influences inappropriate in molding a young individual's persona.
Although the features of information technology can't be denied, it is true that students still need to be taught basic skills that would help them survive in situations when these modern amenities aren't available. Classes should ensure the total amount of teaching basic and more advanced and advanced skills. Incorporating computer education in universities does not mean that basic learning systems should be replaced, rather, both should enhance one another with the optimization of university student skills as the key objective.
Technology For Other Purposes
Being sociable beings, children have a deep-seated need to establish personal relationships with others. Being able to speak to someone, to be in the company of another individual to share experience, emotions, ideas, etc, to belong all of these are basic communal and emotional needs that need to be fulfilled in an adolescent's life.
The question of how technology influences interpersonal relationships is now a popular concern nowadays. The era gap between your older people and the younger generation is broadening. The elderly are accustomed to candid interactions with eyeball contact and are usually adept at reading body gestures and nonverbal gestures. The teenagers of today are extremely much into technological communication via texting, internet chatting, tweeting, etc. and are employed with their mobile phones, Ipods, Ipads and other gadgets. When brought along, the the elderly may complain that younger ones are lacking manners because they don't learn how to give due focus on their companions. It really is as if they are in their own worlds, with their devices as their gateway to attain their friends. Relatives and buddies have become more accessible and available in only a click of a button. The internet also offers a myriad of opportunities for interacting with more people, relaxing with online flash games, posting pictures and videos and an wall plug expressing innermost thoughts and emotions to talk about with others.
However, Bugeja (2005) clarifies how the proliferation of computer-mediated communication affects our views, goals and interpersonal associations. In computer-mediated communication, so many of our personhood becomes filtered that the communication lacks public cues. After that it prevents the establishment of strong interpersonal collaboration and trust especially in cyber conditions where invisibility can be an option. Thus, when people chat online or send texts, a great deal of miscommunication may take place when the received messages are interpreted in different ways from the way the sender intended it. This is because the written text do not show people's tone of voice, facial appearance or non-verbal gestures which donate to the clarity of the subject matter sent.
Technology provides instant gratification in terms of communication. As opposed to long waiting time for letters that contain been mailed in post offices, an email goes through cyberspace in just seconds. However, it still lacks the non-public touch. E-mails can only just be continue reading the display screen whereas handwritten letters can be touched, smelled, read and held, to be read again later. Children may not even appreciate this point because they are born in an age when traditional communicative modes such as mailed words in post offices, and even long face-to-face conversations may not be practiced the maximum amount of in their own lives. They are in age technology making communication faster, although not as close. Bugeja (2005) contends that interaction using technology misses the idea of having action between people. This implies interaction involves bodily coming together and spending time with each other.
McLuhan (1964) lyrically described the impact of digital advertising on the evolution of human beings. He foresees that folks will biologically develop into "information systems" and predicts the future possibilities of multimedia and technology's role in the lives of people. This can be seen in libraries. Students have been trained to be computer literate but now lack skills to be socially literate when they require information. Their understanding of catalogue use has been so ruled by technology that they do not know the fundamentals of searching through credit card catalogues. Librarians who have been kept up to date with current styles in library knowledge now become techno-translators and information mentors and appear to know where to find knowledge and information in the right places more than the students' professors whom Bugeja has referred to as thinking more "like Pentium rather than Plato". Teachers should still provide the actual students need rather than what they need. Students today need knowledge but want entertainment. With evolving technology, the range between knowledge and entertainment becomes blurred because applications (apps) focus on the passions of the young ones to make it more attractive, hence, rewarding for business.
It is very common for folks nowadays to invest much of their day (and even times!) before the television viewing cable connection shows or marathon Dvd and blu-ray films or before the computer working, searching the internet, "facebooking", participating in online games. Interpersonal romantic relationships with people and friends who are bodily present to them become neglected. Interactions suffer when there may be lack of communication and in most cases, communication with real people becomes limited because people are involved in technological activities. Sure, children get access to talk to friends over the internet, but even these online interactions suffer from misinterpretations of information due to insufficient personal contact entailing perception, voice tone, cosmetic expression, body gestures of your partner. In finding their identities, too much participation with technology gets in the form of traditional discoveries about themselves, as digital personalities may be the ones being produced and not their real identities.
People can hook up to others via texting, chatting, skyping, emailing, video-conferencing, etc. but merely relying on such technology rather than making an effort to hook up in true to life may leave spaces in the partnership that require to be filled. There is still nothing that beats being together emotionally, intellectually and actually. This is the foundation of human interaction.
Conclusion
Young people have to be guided accordingly by individuals in finding your way through the challenges they are bound to face in the future. Presently, this fast-paced world results in so many changes that as one gets used to a fresh practice, another one is developed to displace it. One influential change is technology. Another complexity that befalls the youth is the changing morality that is included with progress which often places them in a dilemma. These changes may leave the children at a loss as to which changes to accept and adapt to and those to reject. Thus, the necessity for adolescents to be ably led by wizened mentors who've their welfare in mind. Parents and teachers are identified therefore mentors, as they are supposedly matured, significant people who are deeply mixed up in adolescents' lives and have gone through a gamut of life activities that arm them with the knowledge and skills to survive any challenge. They are really appointed to lead the junior towards a brighter future by empowering them with skills and considering necessary in their future lives.
