Pearblossom Education

During a lesson about old technology, I found myself explaining to my students that the equivalent of texting was similar to the “ancient art” of communicating in pager code. Instead of using letters in an alphabet, numbers were put together to make a word.  Personal pager devices that were attached to the hip were common in the late 1990’s-2000’s. Pagers are small devices that are used to “page” another recipient when a phone call back is desired. My first pager was a small pink pearl one that fit right into the palm of my hand. It had about 15 different “ringtones” I could choose from when someone was trying to contact me, and it had a relatively long battery life.  A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, [1] is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to, and originate messages using an internal transmitt...

Should smartphones be regulated? For the past 15 years, iPhones and Androids have grazed the palms and pockets of nearly everyone alike. In the grand scheme of things, "15 years" is just a scratch on the surface. The trend of cell phones is one that isn't going away anytime soon... Historically, societies have used regulation for order and peace. The drinking age is 21. The voting age is 18. Driver's Licenses are earned at 16, and so on. When policy reform happens, it takes a team of bureaucratic professionals and psychologists to conjure the most practical response to a communal issue. In this case, it shouldn't take a genius to see the damages caused by early exposure to social media and brain rot from too much screen time. Though there are countless research studies on this topic, I've already seen it firsthand as a mother and teacher.    Growing up in the 1990's When I was 13, we had one family computer- in the living room. Out of the five kids in the ...