Living and Learning with New Media

Living an Learning with new Media

Social and recreational new media use as a site of learning. Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging out online, youth are picking up basic social and technological skills they need to fully participate in contemporary society.

-Will Richardson

Not long ago I heard parents complaining about not wanting their children to have cell phones for many reasons. These days, and especially since the 9/11 terror attack it seem that even some of the youngest students have cell phones so that “parent know they are safe” If a parent chose not to provide his /her child with a cell phone is this be a “ barrier to participation.”? I don’t think it is. In this era digital technology parent should still have some way of protecting young children who should be learning social skills in places other than the web. I am not against technology in anyway quite the opposite. I do feel that younger children should not just be allowed to use every technology that is available but rather in stages or according to age.

On the other hand digital technology is available and is used in my 5^th grade classroom where I am student teachers. All teachers use the smart board to incorporate most of curriculum.

Students in my classroom talk constantly about new games they have played on line and they sometime use the computers at the end of the day to play some of these games. Computers are also used as a tool to aid research when needed and students are very comfortable with technology, they are engaged and eagerly participate in discussions after viewing YouTube clips and listening to brain-pop. In fact those are the times when the children are most animated and they all want to contribute to the discussion that invariably follows one of the showings. Although the entire student body is LD it does not prevent them from using technology and in fact they are all able to use the laptops which are available in the classrooms. Recently my class did a project on famous people, most of the students used Google to get information and some student actually got books from the library. I don’t know whether my students blog, as many of them experience difficulties with language, writing and spelling I am also not sure whether they send text messages since they do not use cell phones inside the school.

I find the articles scary and exciting. I am scared that I will find myself in a multi-media classroom where the students are way ahead of me in their knowledge of technology and although I would be able to learn from my students I would want to be able to teach them a thing or two myself. Since students are wired all the time and are learning from each other and from everyone everywhere, it almost seems inevitable that many teachers will not be able to keep up with their students. As the MacArthur piece stated student find others who share their interest and they learn from their peers. As a teacher I find it difficult to keep up with new technology although I try to follow the new trends by reading about them on- line or wherever I am able to get the information. I am comfortable with e-mail and Face book but in general I feel that both are time consuming.