Journal #9: "The Kids are All Right"

In this article, John K. Waters discusses students and their use of technology outside of the classroom. The MacArthur Foundation did a study investigating the understanding of the impact of digital media and communications technologies on how young people learn. Originally this study was supposed to find the impact on how students would learn in the future and instead found that it is impacting the way young people learn right now. The results of this study showed that young people are already participating online at different levels and educators just need to learn how to use that to their advantage.
The three levels of participation that the study identified are “hanging out,” “messing around” and “geeking out.” These levels range from lightweight social contact to complete intense interest. Young people are learning how to use these new technologies faster and better than their adult counterparts, so if educators would learn how to use these in the classroom, they could relate to their students more easily and could possibly encourage them to participate more in the classroom if they used these technologies to their advantage.

Q1. How can we encourage students to participate more in the classroom?
A1. We can encourage student participation by using some of the things we know they already understand, enjoy, and possibly even use on their own time. These are things such as blogs, where students are writing stories or posting general information about themselves and their lives.

Q2. How can we exploit the use of new technologies in the classroom?
A2. I don’t really like the use of the word exploit – it sounds like we’re using something we shouldn’t to get something a person doesn’t want to give. We can take advantage of the students’ use of technology in the classroom by asking them to complete an assignment by using their favorite technology. For example, ask them to create a project about a play you are reading – some may create a skit through YouTube, some may re-write it as though it happened today using GoogleDocs… there are a range of possibilities.

Waters, John K. (March 2009). The Kids are All Right. T-H-E Journal, Retrieved 08 April 2009, from http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24104