Today we will be focusing on teaching generationally. The Info Savvy group, which is branched out of British Columbia, Canada, wrote a series of articles called Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. The article we will be focusing on today is, “Understanding Digital Kids II”. The article discusses the affects of new technology in the classroom and finding better and more effective ways to use old and new techniques for beginning or veteran teachers. 

            Generations are beginning to clash in the classroom as a new age of technology is being brought behind desks. Older techniques of standardized testing, deferred gratification, and slowly released information are being met with parallel processing and only learning what is useful and relevant to today's day and age. Educators are frantically searching to find a middle ground with a healthy balance of cultures. 

One of the points that stuck out to me when reading this article is that if we expect older generations to respect our new techniques and classroom styles, we must respect and honor where they came from. They were the generation of searching for hours and understanding delayed gratification through large papers. Our current generation can write whole papers from computer sources only and understand how to find online sources correctly. Although teachers of today might feel outnumbered and out of luck for when it comes to educating today's generations, we can prepare ourselves to share our wisdom for things that students do not acquire. If we, as teachers, investigate resources that can turn social media and other technology into tools instead of hindrances, we can find the middle ground that education has been looking for. 

 

Moving on, my next point is that we need to “shift our instruction to more of an emphasis on discovery learning”. The articles talk a lot about teaching our students about becoming independent thinkers and learners. This means that instead of giving “full-frontal” lectures, we encourage students to go out and research topics and see what they discover and what they find interesting about it. This allows for critical thinking to form and if we start this at younger grades like kindergarten and other elementary grades, it can be molded through out their K-12 education from all different perspectives and opinions. As the writer of the article puts it, we need to “teach lazy” and allow for them to think on their own. 

My final point that I found interesting about the article is that “assessment and evaluation must be used as more than tools of measurement”. Growing up in a school system where the teacher’s salary and the students worth as academics are determined by certain subjects and testing grades, it can be very disheartening to go to some classes and try. This results to class time being tough on the student and the teacher. Also, the student only looking for the right answers to pass. The student does not want to be involved in the learning process for the fun of learning any more, they only care about passing. We need to leave room for out students to have a margin of error. They are going to mess up and struggle, but instead of that hurting their grade, let’s meet them where they are at as their guide, and look over what they might not understand. We should be showing them that comprehending through being able to apply the content is more important than only being able to understand the content. 

After reading this article, there were two obvious sides. There was the side of teachers pulling toward using older, more traditional techniques for teaching in the classroom and then the other was the group of teachers working toward using new techniques which includes using today’s technology and resources in the classroom. A pro to using older techniques is understanding and respecting the culture of books and the tool that they truly are, but a con is not moving forward in the world if we focus only on using older techniques, which can result in not teaching as effectively. For using the newer techniques, a pro could be being on top of the growing world of technology in the classroom and making learning more interactive and fun for upcoming generations. Although this sounds great, a con for teaching this way could result in a loss of flexibility if computers are down, or just a love for researching through paper sources. 

            After reading and understanding this article, there was one question that really stood out in my mind for how we were to go forward as a teaching generation: What are the ways we intend to compromise our learning culture in the classroom? Are we going to lose sight of the hardworking, but slower way of learning, or are we going to push too far back on new learning styles and leave our classrooms with the basic learning styles of the 1960s?  

 

            The three major points that we are going to identify are that students are struggling to follow older teachers’ activities, the only path laid out here is to look to the new technology for education, and that we as educators need to adjust to how the younger generation learns. 

The second part to this is to know the pros and cons of this article. One pro about this article is the call to further adapt to growing technology to help kids learn better and on their own terms. One con to this article is that we area only seeing the two extremes of technology. It’s either we all devolve to textbooks or upgrade to iPad. There is no middle ground. 

            The last point to address here is to ask a question to expand research in the future about this topic. The question I ask is what if there was a common ground to new generation learning techniques with technology and older generation techniques with longer methods? What if the older and newer generation worked together to form a flexible learning system for all generation that can slowly be adjusted over time as technology advances in the classroom. I ask this because in the article Prensky discussed on page three that “it is highly unlikely the Digital Natives will go backwards.” Prensky also gives on two options in the growth of technology, “should the Digital Native students learn the old ways, or should their Digital Immigrant educators learn the new?” (P.3). I just question if there is another way to find a common ground between the two generations.  

The article we are looking at today is written by Christina Yu in 2012. It is titled, “Technology Can Make Students More Intellectual”. There are many interesting points that not only apply to classroom culture with technology, but also apply to student’s home life with technology. 

            The first point that I found interesting was that, “some fear that technology integration will have students learning the latest trends and techniques” instead of “studying the classics and deep disciplinary knowledge”. I found this point very interesting because it is a worry that many older teachers and members of the learning community share currently as we go into a new stage of technology. 

            This leads to my second point of that “technology has to the potential to completely reutilize traditional liberal arts education”, which means that the very fear that most people of the older generation are having about education is having the opposite effect of what they thought technology was going to have. Technology can be used to explore older genres and dig deeper into interests. The students of today might not be researching the same way, but their ability to look up classics of literature or anything of this sort is not disappearing now that technology is in the picture. 

            Finally, my third point for today is covering what truly matters when it comes to education and learning in the classroom. My third point is “no matter the subject, real mastery depends on understanding how details fit into a whole”. This means that students can look for immediate feed back to determine how they are understanding the subject or what they might need to change. They provide a “systematic understanding of different subjects”. 

            These are important points because they all fit together to show that technology growing and expanding in the classroom is a healthy and useful tool that can help students and teachers find different ways to educate themselves and others on subjects that some might struggle with. 

            The two sides of the argument in this article that I found was (1) the side that found technology only teaching “just in time” learning, rather than “just in case” learning, and (2) the side that found that students are not being hurt in the learning process by technology. I chose these two sides because I observed that these were the two opponents throughout the whole article as the author defended technology in the classroom. 

            After reading this article about the negative feelings most older educators or people have about technology, I decided that my initiative would be to find a way to get rid of this negative stigma and find techniques to help students use technology to its fullest value in the classroom. Therefore, my question is, as a teacher to your students, what programs and teaching styles can I teach to avoid the negative stereotype of technology in the classroom, while still displaying respect for the “golden age” that many people refer to that was used before technology today?

Welcome back to Miss. Kauffman’s blog! As we are near the end of the semester, there have been many questions and comments about what assistive technology looks like and what that means for students in the classroom. This is a very large question with many answers, so let’s dive in! 

            I read an article titled “Assistive Technology for Students with Learning Disabilities” written by Gabrielle Young. This article had many great points that highlighted many of the positive and negative aspects of using different types of assistive technology in the classroom. Three of my favorite points that I thought related to answering the questions that have been asked about how assistive technology works in the classroom are: 

 

1.)    The technology assigned to a student must be shown to be effective within the classroom. What I mean by this is that if I, for example, let a student read on a kindle or on a laptop and they are not comprehending the words or sentences, then I need to try a different technique. Letting a child use technology in the classroom will not always result in them understanding better if they are not using it effectively. For a student that is struggling with comprehension, I would encourage using highlighting, or using sticky notes to summarize the reading page by page. This allows for a deeper comprehension without “high-technology”. 

2.)    The next main point is that the technology needs to be able to be “embedded with quality instruction” to be effective. The first point covered the broad idea that assistive technology must show effectiveness within the classroom. This leads to the question of how can we make technology effective in the classroom when most students do not use it for educational practices? The answer to this is showing the students how to properly use the technology they are given in the classroom. If they are using an iPad, show the students the apps they are allowed to use and how that benefits them in the classroom, while also setting strict boundaries if the student oversteps their privileges. Guidance is key to effectiveness for assistive technology to work in the classroom. 

3.)    The last point that I found important was to have a teacher knowledgeable and that has been through training to help the student in class with the technology. This seems like something that would be commonly known and recognized, but some schools only allow their intervention specialist to go through training on how to handle assistive technology in the classroom when all teachers that encounter a student that has a type of assistive technology should go through the training. 

Now that there is a better understanding of what assistive technology means and what that looks like in the classroom, there are two sides to assistive technology addressed within the article. The two sides that are addressed are that technology should be restricted to only computer labs or specific areas and the other side of that argument being that computers should not be only left in designated spaces and should be allowed to possibly assist anywhere they are needed to where they are built into curriculum. In this article, the writer argued for the use of computers everywhere and to use them to fullest as the amazing tool they are. I agree with the authors stance, as long as districts are not just making schools use them only for the purpose of using technology and ensuring that having them has a purpose for assisting a child. 

 

Wrapping up this topic, one question that I am interested to hear the answer for is how can we educate not only educators better, but also parents? In the past, I have discussed the importance of teacher and parents teamwork, so in the process of bringing assistive technology into the classroom, how can involve all parents to be educated about this new step in education? 

There were many informative points that I found within the article, but three stood out. The first point is that there is a lot of information presented online and finding out where to “focus attention is a crucial skill for informed citizens”. This point means that as educators, we have to show our students that not everything they read on the internet or for a headline is correct. Many news sources will manipulate words and phrases or just plaining post fake news to gain profit off of readers. Krutka and Carpenter explain that teachers can teach students the signs of fake news through solutions like the “C.R.A.P. test” which gives the students a layout on how to make sure their sources a valid and true. This is crucial because you need be correctly informed to have a clear opinion for where you stand and to do that, you must have valid sources. 

The next point is to help justice-orientated citizens grow requires helping them raise their awareness of oppression and researching “adaptable strategies” that they need “in the face institutional resistance”. This point means that to help students be rooted in facts for things that they are passionate about, they must research said topics and gain strategies to help them in future endeavors toward opposing opinions. We must guide students to research their sources and be backed by facts to help them gain a strong opinion rooted in truth. 

The last point is a point that I collected throughout the article, and it is if we ban social media in schools, we are not guiding the students to live up to their fullest potential online and in person civically. This means that if we are not teaching the students how to have civil conversations online with opposing opinions, or to not only surround yourself with people that have the same opinion as you do, we are not teaching them much needed people skills that can help them further in life when they face democratic issues in their communities. We need to teach the students how to apply social media in a helpful and to use it as the powerful tool it is to make change in what ever citizenship form that takes for the student. 

There were two sides to this article that were fairly obvious. The first side was the side that wants to apply social media as a tool in civics and advocacy and the second side is against the use of social media as a tool in the classroom. I understand both sides of this argument from growing up in the age of new technology and the ability to use it consistently in the classroom. I agree with the side of using social media in the classroom, because it allows for students to apply a form of communication that they are familiar with and use everyday to make change within the community through democracy when they are guided on the correct ways to use it in the context of civics. 

My question for today’s article is based off of the classroom setting that has been created. In my fifth-grade classroom, what are ways in a daily routine that I could find a way to teach about social media usage for civic purposes? Is fifth grade too young to begin the discussion of how to use social media in this way?