In my home growing up we did not have Gameboys, Nintendo or any of the other awesome new digital game. I remember being in the Library and being annoyed that the answer I was looking for was not in the Encyclopedia I had picked. I am quite certain I did not want to search further, but I had a teacher guiding me to do so. My lack o Sometimes I think people like to blame someone or something, instead of working to reach the students.
I think the way students learn has changed, and perhaps it has changed attention spans, but as educators we need to meet our students where they come to us. If a Kindergarten does not know his letters and his mom lets him play on her smartphone for hours on end, why not suggest apps that allow him to be exposed to his letters more regularly. In school we can use computer centers to enhance instruction that is being given. I'm not suggesting that students be watching movies or just play on the computer all day. However, when we are having trouble reaching students who are used to using technology regularly, we need to embrace that as a way to meet our students needs. Instead of as the one teacher said, to not lower her standards or the way she teaches.
The main reason I feel technology should be included in the classroom, even early childhood classrooms, is because we are educating students for the jobs of tomorrow. Those jobs will likely be full of technology. To be able to deliver packages for UPS you need to be able to operate handheld electronic devices. Our current preschool and Kindergarteners will be taking their standardized tests on computers, when are in upper grades, on computers. I would think that would be motivation alone for teachers to have computer literate students who are able to comprehend what they read from a computer screen.
wrapping it all up: Do our students learn differently than students of the past? absolutely! Did we learn differently than our parents did? yes! It is part of developing as a nation. Our students need to be able to interact with the technology of tomorrow comfortably and effectively. That means allowing them to explore and learn to be literate in it in our classrooms, while continuing to teach them to be literate in books.
Richtel, M. (2012, November 01). Technology is chaning how students learn, teachers say. The new york times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/education/technology-is-changing-how-students-learn-teachers-say.html?ref=education&_r=0
Rhea,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the way students learn in the twentieth century is vastly different from the way students learned in the past. You bring up a number of good points. Specifically, I liked how you brought up a kindergartener who does not know his letters, but plays on his mother's phone. Part of our job is communicating to parents how they can help their child along the journey to literacy. I also agree with your last sentence, "allowing them to explore...while continuing to teach them to be literate in books". How will you keep the level of engagement up in students like the child you mentioned that doesn't know his letters but plays on his mother's phone? Do you think it is important to have the same level of engagement for books as for e-readers? I don't know whether that is important. I think that is a challenge with teachers: keeping kids engaged in literacy as much as possible so that students want to read on their own.
You bring up many good questions and discussion points based on our technology advanced society. I agree that growing up our schooling and leisurely activities were very different from the students we teach today. Many of my students seem to know the insides and out of any apple tool (iphone, ipad, itouch, etc.). And instead of reading a book before bed, they are playing some sort of digital game. Like you mentioned in your blog, I agree that it is important that the instruction we provide meets the needs of our students, and as teacher I feel we need to be at their level technologically. However, it scares me that soon children (and adults) are going to veer away from printed books and just rely on digital books. That takes away from the warm, cozy feeling of grabbing a paperback book and having true story time with your child. It is our job as teachers to promote the use of technology in our daily lessons; meanwhile, continue to encourage children to check out books from the library!
ReplyDeleteTechnology has already made itself a major part of the society’s fabric. There is rarely a place out there, or at least in the city, that doesn’t use any technology in some ways. As you mentioned, even in delivering packages, which before had never used any digital tools, has now been using “tech-stuff” to increase efficiency. Presently, most establishments if not all of them use technology in their daily business undertaking. According to the eHow's jobs for the future, there will be a pressing need for people to equip themselves in technology-related jobs if they want to secure their future; these jobs include Physician Assistance, Medical Assistance, Occupational Therapist, Software Design Engineer, Network Computer System Administrators, and other technology-related professions. This is a simple way of saying that technology will always be and more likely, in the future, be an essential part of our daily endeavors. Much more, technology will dictate successes or failures in various occupations.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think the keyword here is “balanced.” I agree with you when you pointed out that we should expose our students to technology because we need to prepare them for jobs that require technology-manipulation in some ways, but in the same light, we should always be aware of the deteriorating effect of technology to the human brain. Looking at the current trend in school with the use of digital calculators, as a concrete example, kids rely much on technology that they become inefficient or worst futile without it. Allow me to use my personal experience as a reliable example, when I used to give math intervention classes to 7th and 8th grade students, I noticed that students use calculators even for the simple addition or multiplication problems. One problem was to find the value of x in the equation: x = 2(y) + 12. The value of y, which was 2, was already given. So doing a mental math, the value of x is 16. Surprisingly, students took time in solving the equation. Most of them used calculators in order to figure out the value of x. One student even used the calculator for 2(y), hitting the keypad on calculator for 2 x 2 = 4. To me, this is a sad scenario and a debilitating effect of too much reliance on technology. For a 7th or an 8th grader who didn’t know the product of 2 x 2 and who needed the assistance of the calculator to finish the task was just incomprehensible.
There are certain things that we ought to do with or without the presence of technology. Technology is a product of human ingenuity; it has made our jobs a lot easier and made the world as it is today. However, we should not forget that it’s only a part of us. Let’s use this to our advantage, without compromising the things that make us great as humans: our intelligence, our ingenuity!