( Short note…I’ll get better with my blog entries. There are six blog entries which are missing here…As I get time, I’ll repost/move/recreate them depending on topic. Thanks to those who asked “Where’s your blog entries — I KNOW you’ve been places and talked about them at X…”)
Today (April 9th 2014), the BSA’s Deputy Chief Scout Executive/Chief Tech guy guest blogged on the SCOUTING magazine’s blog site and gave his point of view concerning the usage of technology — in particular “smartphones” — those multifunctional pocket electronic devices that literally can do just about anything except make a cup of coffee (can’t do that — but they can pay for a cup of coffee at several places!) and their utility during Scouting events.
I’m personally a bit “old school.” My personal cellphone was “smart” when I bought it 11 years ago, but clearly it’s seen better days and nights and the technology has surpassed it a long time ago. I have to use a Bluetooth(tm) earpiece because the built-in microphone has died off a long time ago. I can’t access a lot of websites because of the usage on those sites (including my own!) of elements (Flash for one) which my poor “dumbphone” cannot support.
I am thinking about purchasing a newer phone — but this phone right does those things *I* need for it to do. Not as quickly. Not with a lot of flair. Not sometimes reliably. But it works.
Hey Gary!!
I have went back and forth over the decades about the “Taking along” of various tech tools during Scouting events. I continue however to *support bringing them and using them as the tools they are*.
As a Scout, I was one of the fortunate ones whose parents assisted me in purchasing my first Kodak Instamatic ™ camera. $12 for a camera which I still have sitting on a shelf was a good investment. This was, of course, after a year and a half of using a pen-hole camera which I made over a “bored weekend”, looking at old issues of _Boys’_ Life_ in the library.
(Point of knowledge: I attempted to pay back the Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim Library the cost of that issue of BL since in the days before Xerox came to Germany, I simply tore the page out, went home on the community bus and gathered the materials to make that camera. The Library refused my money, saying that in the future I should consult a Librarian and perhaps they would request a copy of the article from the authors or publishers. Didn’t think about that at the time…I was only 10 then.)
I didn’t get my first cellphone until was “directed” by my boss to buy one while I was working on a project at the Pentagon. He got tired of calling the hotel and leaving messages for me. That was 2000. My cellphone had no “bells” nor “whistles” — just the ability for me to call and receive calls. Since then, I did purchase a series of phones which either I left on the roof of my van, which eventually it died on a roadway; I accidently dunked it into coffee and it shorted out; I crushed one the day before the last day of the 2001 National Scout Jamboree while getting out of a parking space (it fell out of a pocket and all I heard was a crunching sound before I checked and said “oh no…”) and other events related to my usage at Scouting events.
I’m a grown man. Should have known better. But those are facts and well after I’m gone from this Earth, people will continue to bring them up and laugh with me about how those phones met their demise. That’s fine.
I marvel at the tech that our kids have. Why yes, they spend time playing “Angry Birds” and chat — in real time most cases, using Skype while making faces and laughing at each other — with other kids.
I have sat down and kept my trap shut while a Scout was talking with his mom during a break at the last National Jamboree. She was concerned about the Scout’s walking around, lack of food, lack of warm showers. The Scout showed her, turning his phone around and providing views of his point of view while explaining that “Mom, nobody’s complaining here. Maybe they’re all jealous. I am having a great time and I’ll probably cry when I have to leave all of this in a few days. Besides, all of this hiking will probably get me ready for the Troop’s high adventure next year.”
No better commercial for the value of Scouting — real Scouting, not “stuff we say we do to get people to commit.”
James Bond, MacGyver and Steven Segall has taught kids and many of us adults that “anything we can hold and use as a tool can be also be used as a weapon.” Unfortunately, we hear about such instances even today. A kid, using a knife, has harmed upwards of 20 others at a school outside of Pittsburgh. Earlier, we read or find that others are being bullied simply through the text messages sent to large numbers of students from a single cellphone. Of course the BSA’s policies on the usage of cellphones had to be revised in view of the rash of “sexting” situations around the nation and world.
I still own pocketknives — I can’t take them with me when I fly, however — the TSA must have my photo on a flyer somewhere, because every time I fly with a pocketknife — the TSA knows this and singles me out for “additional screening” and there it is…and there it goes… *smiling*. There is, however a positive value in having a multiple-blade, many purpose hand-held tool.
Same goes with the Nokia Communicator I own presently. It’s not as “smart” as more modern phones go, but the tools it has within its electronics has done me extremely well over the decade or so I’ve managed to hold onto it without crushing it (not taking it, but instead a more durable model during the Jamboree helped *grinning*).
As long as we remember to use them as TOOLS, and not as recreational devices, we’ll be just fine.
Hope to see you in a few weeks at the National Meeting!
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