You have the vaccine for a pandemic. The vaccine has the power to wipe the disease off the map and save or improve millions of lives. People all over the world would benefit from the use of this vaccine. After years of use and vast improvement across the globe, there is a growing concern over lives being claimed by narcotics. Many of these are delivered using the very same types of needles and syringes as we use to deliver vaccines. A war is waged on the vessel and delivery system. There are articles written about the harmful effects of needles and syringes, rather than about the narcotics. There are campaigns to stop their use. There are hospitals that ban all needles and syringes to help combat this problem. Doctors and medical researchers try to explain that the problem isn’t with the syringe or needle- it’s just a tube!
While this may seem far-fetched, imagine the vaccine represents modern educational content; the syringe, the internet; the needle, a mobile device; and the narcotics, trash content.
We’ve seen a push back against the power of mobile devices like laptops and smartphones in education; however, we are waging war with the wrong piece of the puzzle. Try to convince an adult that a smart phone isn’t an important part of their life, they might even agree. Then ask them to turn it off for a week. Or a day. We can’t continue to confuse the low-quality content with the device itself and ignore its power as an educational tool.