Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Gen M reading
Well, that officially made me feel like a fish out of water. According to their reckoning, I'm supposed to be on the upper end of generation M, but I am not as 'plugged in' as the people they describe and I apparently have the previous generation's definitions of private and public. Besides a sense of social ostracism that I thought I'd left in middle school, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get out of this article. I know the world keeps shrinking as people become increasingly connected, and I know that my future students will be in the habit of doing six techy things at once. I also know that, at the end of the day, that habit is just going to make my job of getting them to focus on me that much harder. (sigh) I wonder if it would be hypocritical of me to go watch Youtube now?
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I agree I'm not really sure what to get out of the article except understand that are students will be extremely connected and multitasking. It would have helped more if it addressed what we as teachers should do. Anyway let me suggest a youtube video that I probably watch a dozen times during 511, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwNi8dzj0S8 I've seen it hundreds of times I get a laugh out of it.
ReplyDeleteI think you may be able to create a good situation for your students in the classroom because of your tech phobia. I like to think of myself as fairly tech-savy but I think you could make your class a haven from technology where students can have a break from being plugged in.
ReplyDeleteYou're right--they don't really say how to handle this situation in the article. Maybe it is NOT a bad thing to say "no computers, cell phones, etc" in this class or this part of class. Not just as a break from constant tech-use, but also as a way to change up the class routine. I would imagine that if all schools became all tech, all the time, we would just be one of the white noises in the background (again) or just another thing on the periphery--which is what we are trying to remedy right now. We have to find out how to use tech in ways to bring knowledge to the forefront of the student's time in the classroom, not blend it into the background. If that means using low or no tech, maybe that is not a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteCatherine,
ReplyDeleteTeaching students to pay full attention rather than the 'continuous partial attention' is a concern of mine as well... I think technology can add a lot to the classroom but there should be a good balance so that kids don't learn to rely too heavily on technology... I think clear rules will play a big role in our classrooms to address the technology issue.
You bring up a really interesting point -- how do we get students to divert some parts of their partial attention to be paying FULL attention in class? how can we use technology (or other means) to capture and maintain their attention, when they have so many other things to take their attention? I think this will be a really interesting problem for all of us to explore as we go on throughout our student teaching.
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