As I sit here working on some homework for my class that I am taking, I have Twitter and Facebook both on in the background. Seeing the updates pop up in the background it reminds me of how much these tools have changed the way that we live now. Information comes across these sites almost instantly as they happen, and spreads across the world so that by the time they hit the nightly news they are old and people have moved on to the next thing. For example, when I woke up this morning and logged on the first posts I started to see were about the plane crash in which it was feared that the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski along with his family and top military leaders had been killed. As the events unfolded pictures and videos of people going to the capital and mourning began to surface, and updates on others that were killed, along with what may have gone wrong started to appear. This is history as it happens, and something that you can never again get is the true raw emotions and reactions that the world has as an event happens. Future writings will leave out certain facts, or twist an event to affirm what the author believes happened, and how it affected Poland as a nation. What cannot be twisted whether they prove to be correct of not is a person’s real-time reaction to an event such as this. Imagine what it would have been like if people would have been there and able to use social media to twitter about the Gettysburg Address as it happened, or were able to post pictures to their facebook wall of Paul Revere’s famous ride. What would the initial reaction of the people of that time be? It is something that we will never know about these historical events, however as we become a more connected society and world the chance to see and learn from each other becomes a more valuable tool. So this makes me wonder in an age where students and people are learning in an instant, why is it that so many teachers still will not embrace this technology?
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