Teaching Students In Todays World

  Growing up, school for me was always worksheets, listening, and copying information down. As the years of past, we have seen the shift in this. This shift has happened fairly quickly when we look back on it. Wesch describes this as a “new culture of participation”, where the web is about linking people and not just information.  This can mean sharing ideas and information, such as blogs and youtube videos.This took me a few minutes to wrap my head around. I kept listening to the video and now have a clear understanding. Technology has advanced tremendously and we have started using it as an asset for learning. We as learners have access to all information at our very fingertips. 

 

I feel as though there are still a lot of people who view media and technology as a harmful tool and something that we as educators should fully avoid. Technology in this day and age is a part of every child’s life. They are creating their own youtube videos, tik toks, and even streaming on certain gaming platforms.  In my opinion we simply can’t avoid it, It is part of our world now. Instead of working against it, why not use it and build upon it. 

 

I believe that moving forward, it is more important to  teach students how to be safe on the internet. Teaching them how to navigate through different information and teaching them the skills on how to detect what is correct and what is not. Thinking critically is such an important life long skill and this is our opportunity as teachers to really reinforce that concept. We also need to establish a clear understanding of when tech is used for learning and not as a distraction.