The research published by The McArthur Foundation in, “Living and Learning with New Media: Summary and Findings from the Digital Youth Project”, to be very informative.
http://www.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7BB0386CE3-8B29-4162-8098-E466FB856794%7D/DML_ETHNOG_WHITEPAPER.PDFI
I always considered everything my own kids did on the Internet was “messing around” – I liked how they divided activities kids utilize technology for into three distinctive areas.
I have two teenagers and they have both have had MySpace profiles for over two years. I found it ironic that they study found that most teenagers see adults who get involved in using MySpace or FaceBook as intruding, when it was my own kids who started my first profile on MySpace over two years ago. I think a child’s reaction to their parent becoming involved would depend on their relationship with them. As I said, my kids have encouraged me to have profiles on these social networks, but refuse to add their father as a friend on the same networks.
As a parent, it has become the norm at our house for both my kids, as well as myself to have our cell phones with us and to send and receive texts pretty constant throughout the day and night. It is not uncommon for my son to be on his PS3 playing online, talking to his friends as they play war games in one room and for my daughter or myself to be online on a social network at the same time. Multi-tasking has become a way of life, as I find myself to be online, on my home phone and to be receiving a text on my cell phone. If this constant “being in touch” has become “normal” for me, I can only imagine how it is second nature to young people today.
As a teacher, I am very frustrated at the lack of technology I have available to use in my classroom. I have one computer, a scan converter, a 32-inch TV, and a DVD player. In 2000, when I was teaching a technology class, I attended the Technology Convention in Savannah and they were pushing the newest advances in technology at the time, the Smartboards. That was close to a decade ago and we still have none in our schools to utilize. My students have more technology available in their own bedrooms to use than I do in my school. How can we possible teach kids using pencil and paper assignments and expect them to find these activities to be stimulating in the least?
I have witnessed my own children learn how design their social network profiles, learning shortcuts and tricks by learning from their friends or from experimenting on their own. It amazes me at how many teenagers have been rich from developing their own websites where they give copy and paste codes for backgrounds and “extras” for these social networks.
This year I have noticed a very big increase in our students who are posting videos on YouTube – having picked video editing up on their own by trial and error. Just last week, my boyfriend’s 8 year old daughter asked me to look up her friend’s video on YouTube. Of course she had help with this from her parents, but the child gave a great tutorial on fixing an after-school snack. This year, in addition to Power points, I have included YouTube videos as a choice for projects in my classes. The only problem I’ve encountered is that YouTube is blocked by our Firewall, so I have to bypass it to even be able to show the student’s presentation.
I am very excited about all of the programs I am becoming familiar with and I plan on incorporating them into my curriculum, as much as I can with what I have available. I know we have to catch up to our student’s knowledge in technology so that we can help them learn to utilize it in their education. Otherwise, we’re doing them a huge disservice. One student describes it best when they said, “when I go to school, I have to power down”.
http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/learning-20.html
The following video pretty much sums up the future of learning, in a funny, yet thought provoking way. It’s kind of scary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K04o2ic4g-A
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