Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/8196
8A – Daily News – Tuesday, March 23, 2010 Toughest college test: No cell phone, no Facebook MINNEAPOLIS (MCT) — Heather LaMarre calls her stu- dents "the wired genera- tion." The University of Minnesota professor sees that they don't listen to an iPod, talk on a cell phone or surf on a laptop — they do all three at once. She reads articles about their numbness to tech- nology and knows that if one e-mails her at 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday and she doesn't write back by 11:30, he'll freak out. So she did something about it. A recent class assign- ment: Five days without media or gadgets that didn't exist before 1984. Sophomore Lucy Knopff lasted half an hour before she acciden- tally flicked on her iPod. "You don't even think about it," she moaned. "It's just a habit for me." LaMarre didn't realize she's part of a trend: A growing group of instruc- tors around the country are prescribing their highly wired students a kind of shock treatment. Go without media for 48 hours. Turn off your phone for a day. Block Facebook for a week. "Honestly, most of my students are oblivious to the huge role mass com- munication and the Inter- net play in their lives," said Amy Kristin Sanders, a media law professor at the U who has forced students into 24-hour media fasts. "They really think about access to the Internet as one of life's necessities." Students are finding the fasts anywhere from impossible to freeing — and sometimes, over time, both. David Parry, a profes- sor at the University of Texas at Dallas, is in his 30s and began teaching digital literacy less than a decade ago. But even he has seen a dramatic change. "These 18-year-olds don't know a world with- out Google, YouTube or text messaging," he said. "I've found that my job is to make it unfamiliar to them." This semester — to a chorus of gasps and groans — he assigned the students in his introduc- tion to electronic and digital communications class to quit Facebook for a week. Olivia Myles quickly found that to stay off Facebook, she'd have to abandon Twitter and LinkedIn as well. They were too intertwined. To stay in touch with her family and friends — most of whom live in California, where she's from — she couldn't poke them, post on their walls or comment on their photos. She had to call them. "Even though I talked to my cousin every day, I hadn't heard her voice forever," said the 26- year-old junior. "It was weird. We were like, 'We should do this more often.' " Still, Myles signed onto Facebook when the assignment ended. "Who has time to call all these people?" she joked and, on her blog, confessed: "I miss being nosy." A break from social networking sites can help people ask important questions about their pur- pose, said Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Do you see your friends more often? Do you have telephone calls where you really can reach bet- ter understandings of what the other person is thinking and feeling? "Breaking the circuit, for me, is not about breaking an 'addiction,' " said Turkle, whose com- ing book, "Alone Togeth- er," looks at young peo- ple who voluntarily sign off Facebook and other sites. "We have to learn to live with these tech- nologies. But a break can help us use technology to open a conversation." The media fasts vary in how long, how serious and what's banned. Most require the undergrads to journal or blog along the way. LaMarre's five-day assignment within the U public relations course allowed students to use computers for work and homework, while fresh- men taking a fall course at Augsburg College in Minneapolis could not use a long list of elec- tronic media — including cell phones, computers, televisions, video games and radio — for 12 hours. "Make a plan for what you'll do instead of using media," the description of that assignment advised. "You could hang out with your friends at a coffee shop and just talk. ... You could play board games like chess or Scrabble." A daylong or even weeklong fast isn't enough for John Kim, a new media professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. For a class he's planning, called "Immedia," he hopes to take students out of the city and off the grid for two weeks. He expects that with- out cords and wireless, the students would real- ize just how much they rely on both and, upon returning, would experi- ence "a kind of bewilder- ment," he said. "I imag- ine a lot of them have never done something like that, never gone on an extended hiking trip. It would be eye-open- ing." Red Bluff Elementary School District Kindergarten registration for the 2010-11 school year will open for Kindergarten Registration Bidwell, Jackson Heights & Metteer Schools Beginning March 22rd Forms may be picked up and completed, or taken home and returned. Please bring an appropriate document verifying your child’s date of birth. RED BLUFF OUTDOOR POWER 527-5741 490 Antelope Blvd., Red bluff Mon. - Sat. 8-5 Read the owner’s manual before operating Honda Power Equipment Your child must be 5 years old on or before December 2, 2010 to be eligible to enroll. If you have any questions, you may call Bidwell at 527-7171; Jackson Heights at 527-7150; or Metteer School at 527-9015. Like other professors assigning media-absten- tion, Kim is no Luddite. He used to work for Internet start-ups as a programmer and design- er. Sanders says her Blackberry "never leaves CHECKS CASHED • Refunds • Government • Local Payroll LOW 2% FEE M-F 10am-5:30 pm Sat. 11 am-4 pm Exchange Exchange Gold Affordable Gifts For All Occasions 530 528-8000 413 Walnut St. Red Bluff my side." Parry is known for his use of Twitter in the classroom. But all believe that colleges and even high schools need to do a bet- ter job developing stu- dents' digital literacy. Students know how to use Facebook, but they don't think often enough about what using Face- book means. By Day 5 of LaMarre's assignment, her Universi- ty of Minnesota class- room was filled with evi- dence of failure. In the students' bags? Laptops. In their hands? iPhones. In their ears? Earbuds. Of the 43 students in the public relations course, just a handful made it even three days without new technology. Those who didn't had their reasons: "I had 225 missed e- mails," said Emma Casey, a public relations and Spanish major who lasted longer than many of her classmates. "It made me very, very anx- ious." "I don't have very good self-control," a stu- dent admitted. Then, from the middle of the room: "My mother thought I died." LaMarre, an assistant professor of strategic communication, pointed out that many of the peo- ple they hope to work for don't use technology as they do, and "it's not because we're not capa- ble," she said. "But the more and more we are linked in, the less and less freedom we have, in a way." Several students, who seemed to have forgotten about the cell phones and laptops sitting beside them, nodded their heads at that one. Is cremation your choice? Hoyt-Cole Chapel of the Flowers owns and operates the only on-site crematory in Tehama County. • Your loved one NEVER leaves our care. • For your peace of mind, we personally perform cremations on site. • No hidden charges. If cremation is your choice, there really is no other choice for you than the cremation experts at Hoyt-Cole Chapel of the Flowers. 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