University Declares a Week Without Social Media
 

University Declares A Week Without Social Media

"What if one day Facebook, Twitter and Instant Messenger just weren't there?
Provost Eric Darr of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania tells NPR's Guy Raz that he wanted his students to not only think about this question, but live it."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=129813420

I think this is great. Students who participate will learn great lessons not only in communication, but in time management.

Trust me, those of us who went to college without facebook, Twither, instant messaging and *gasp* even cell phones had plenty of other ways to mismanage our time.

And, quite honestly, did not communicate all that well, which is why we are so thrilled to "find" so many old friends on Facebook now, 20+ years later.

LOL, I did go to college back then. ;) You forgot we didn't have email and had to hide in closets if we wanted to have a private conversation, because the phones were still attached to the wall.

I do agree that FB is a great tool to get back in touch with people that you don't really have time for daily interactions with, but when I took classes over the last couple of years, it would drive me bonkers when students were texting while professors were lecturing (because I had to keep hearing all the buzzing) and couldn't believe when students took calls during class. It was often difficult to get a computer in the lab and nearly impossible in the library because of FB and MySpace.

Yep! Only you and your friends weren't interrupted every 2 minutes with a text/phone call/email. It was kind of freeing. You were more "in the moment".

Funny story about phones and the ancient times (1989). My first semester, my room mate and I decided to get the phone plan where you pay for each call, including local calls. We thought, who are we going to call locally? Calling our families were "toll calls" (different part of the state) and long distance (out of state). We didn't think that we'd be calling other people on campus, ordering food, etc. Every local call cost like 3 cents a minute, which added up (we knew we'd have to pay to call our parents or friends at other schools).

My second semester, my new roommate already had "local service", and my dad gave me a calling card to call home with, so that was golden.

Sigh. I still remember when payphones were 10 cents. They changed that in 1982.

Exactly.

Ah, phones attached to the walls. Raise your hand if they had rotary dials. :D

I agree that those are problems, but they're not communication or time-management problems. They're courtesy, respect and boundary problems.

But could today's students figure out how to goof off without FB/texting? ;)

I saw this story somewhere else, and someone pointed out that this might not be an overall good idea because people have also come to rely on social media for actual productive/important reasons, like keeping in touch with family who are overseas or sick.

There's no way I could go a week without social media as a student... since Social Media Marketing is a course on my curriculum this semester :)

Man, text messaging would have taken forever with a rotary phone...

*rimshot*

R.......... I...... M.......... S............ H..... O.......... T..............

See. It'd take forever. ;)

It's a WEEK. If there's an emergency, I'm sure people can be found.

I think it would be a very interesting experiment. There is such a thing as too much access and maybe this will trigger the students (and staff!) to turn off their phones every once in a while. I can't travel without my laptop any more, and that's just sad. But I still don't have the interweb on my phone. I like to justify that as, you know, not THAT much dependence on the web. Don't lecture me. I KNOW!

Do sororities have phone duty any more?

I started college in 1993, and our campus didn't automatically set you up with e mail. You had to go to the Computer Science building and apply for an account - which wasn't even personalized. It was a string of letters, the @ symbol, and a domain name having nothing resembling anything - it a "MUSIC" account - Multi University Shared Internet Computing (or something close to that).

I wrote letters. Actual handwritten letters.

And then I attached them to a carrier pigeon, went and beat my laundry against a rock and took a steam operated trolley to Chapter Meeting.

Ok, I'm totally taking this train in another direction, but whatever...

When someone is so careless sending you text messages that you can barely make out what they are trying to communicate, do you feel obligated to read/respond to them? I'm not talking about text-speak like "b back 4 dinner @6 after sk8ing" (and even that drives me crazy, but I understand it) - I'm talking about people who can't bother with the 5 seconds it takes to proof a text and make sure it's actually comprehensible.

My mom keeps doing it, and it drives me batshit crazy. She blames it on her learning disability, but somehow her LD didn't stop her from getting two college degrees, including a Master's.

I would tell the person that I will ignore their texts if I can't understand them.

I don't have anyone who texts me in a manner that I can't understand. I also don't have anyone who texts me that often. They know that I'm not a huge fan of texting beyond necessity. My parents don't really know what a text message is and how to do it. I think I received a test text a long time ago from both of them. It made me laugh like crazy. It was so cute. There's no need to text when you're in your 70s. It's wrong on so many levels. LOL.

A friend of mine in high school's parents still had a rotary phone in 1988. By choice. With a rotary, there was no call waiting. I was never good at dialing rotary phones. It usually took at least two or three tries. :o

Back then, you also dialed "0" to reach an operator who could:

• Help you make international, collect, "person to person" and multiple-party calls
• Interrupt phone calls for an emergency (before/without call waiting, if the phone number was in use, you got a busy signal).
• Provide phone numbers
• Call the police/fire/ambulance, etc. As a little kid, I was taught "0" and not 911.
• Tell you the time. We did this when power went out and you needed to know the time, during the power outage, and when it came back (to reset your clocks). No, we never wore watches, lol.
• Help you with phone service problems.

My grandmother was one of these operators. I like 411, but they don't do all that!

If it was someone like my mom, they'd get a "huh?" back. Otherwise, they'd be ignored.