Dependence on tools

Find yourself wasting time?
Technology can help—or hinder.

• Amy Barrus / Opinion Editor
• scrollopinion@byui.edu

Anyone who has seen the video on YouTube that shows two people stuck on an escalator knows that it’s quite the unbelievable scene. Anyone who hasn’t can keep reading to find out.

It starts out with a man and a woman on an escalator that’s taking them to the second floor. All of a sudden, it stops.

The woman starts talking first and says, I don’t need this. I’m already late. The man answers back with, Somebody will come, and then proceeds to yell, Anybody up there?

With no answer, the cell phone reflex kicks in, and the woman frantically searches through her bag for hers, without success. She asks the man if he has a phone. After checking his pockets, he answers negatively.

Somebody? Hello! There are two people stuck on an escalator and we need help. Now, would somebody please do something? the man says.

Going into hysteria, the woman yells, Help! which echoes through the whole building, showing that it’s empty. The man laughs mirthlessly and says, I don’t believe this. You gotta be kidding me, to which the woman answers, I’m gonna cry. The man then answers back with something very interesting. Well, there’s nothing else left to do, is there?

Anyone who’s watching it is thinking, Yeah, there’s nothing left for you to do. Except maybe pick up your feet and walk up the remaining eight or 10 steps, oh bright ones.

But no matter how hard people are laughing while watching this, the little nugget of truth that is wedged into this clip is startling if one starts to think about it. The truth is that we as a nation and generation are dependent upon technology and sometimes let it govern our lives instead of thinking for ourselves.

This isn’t a new truth. Technology has been around as long as man has, whether it’s been electronics or the wheel.

Twenty years ago, what did we do without technology? What was our pace like? asked Doug Thompson, technology support director at BYU-Idaho. With our gadgets we’re thinking go, go, go and trying to do more and more and more. Technology was made for the benefit of man, but it can also be a hindrance.

The worry that technology will be a hindrance to learning is something that the administration at BYU‑I has had to think about, along with trying to implement President Clark’s three initiatives: to give the opportunity of a BYU‑I education to more students, lower the cost of that education and improve the quality of it, too. Technology is a realistic way of accomplishing all three of the initiatives, but not without some careful planning ahead of time.

One of the things we’ve witnessed for many decades is that sometimes people get excited and want to use [technology] because it’s new, said Max Checketts, academic vice president of BYU‑I. What we’re trying to do is determine when it improves the learning of the student.

The main guideline of the administration about technology is to not be on the bleeding edge. In other words, to not be automatically involved in a product when it first comes out. Instead, administrators wait until the second generation of the product to see what it brings, which is usually a cost reduction and more ideas about use for it.

With that one guideline, we’ve been encouraged to see how technology could be used to improve learning, Checketts said.

The administration is all for using technology for the betterment and learning of students, but it is not blind to the problems that will arise.

We’re looking at a policy that gives the teacher the right to say, Laptops down, which would mean all students would have to close their laptops, Checketts said. We’ve done some research and students are doing things other than learning in class [with their laptops].

Everyone has seen this firsthand at least once or has been the culprit themself.

Other instances where we misuse technology or make it the scapegoat, center around Blackboard and PowerPoint.

How many times have professors heard the excuses, The printer wasn’t working, or My computer crashed, or Blackboard froze and I couldn’t finish my quiz?

Or how much class time is wasted because the PowerPoint presentation the professor was counting on didn’t pull up and he or she didn’t have a back-up plan?

There are a few solutions, but not using technology just isn’t a really feasible idea.

It’s part of our life, Thompson said, and everyone could really agree with that.

But that doesn’t mean professors and students shouldn’t have a back-up plan and prepare for the worst to happen technology-wise. And if the worst does happen, whether or not there was a back-up plan, don’t automatically point the finger at the computer.

To have an alternate plan and not rely solely on technology would mean one is more prepared than the Internal Revenue Service.

The government agency looked upon to keep America up to date on taxes and make sure people aren’t cheating the government out of money had a computer problem in the 2006 tax season. The program that red-flags potentially dishonest tax claims stopped working. They knew about it and virtually ignored it.

Internal IRS documents obtained by USA TODAY, including a $400,000 post-failure assessment of the project, show the agency received multiple warnings about serious problems, according to the article How the IRS failed to stop $200M in bogus refunds in USA TODAY.

Don’t ignore the warnings of technology failure you may see! Learn from the government’s mistakes.