Wednesday, September 30, 2009

In response to an article in NEATODAY

I found this article real interesting and relevant to our coursework in MEDI.

Turning the Page: Students Live in a Digital World. Are Schools Ready to Join Them?
(neatoday: October/November 2009, pp. 24, 25, and 27.

This articles explains how some schools are diving into the digital world, yet there can be drawbacks to it as well.

Many teachers are turning to WEB 2.0 literature and a wide array of digital tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) to allow students to collaborate, create, and share their writings. When reading literature, many students are digitally posing as characters, actively engaging them in the process.

As this articles mentions, the key to being literate is using critical thinking skills to anaylze, critique, and evaluate information that is shown to them and that has been shared by their peers. These skills are essential to have in an informational society, and as teachers, we are consistently reinforcing these skills through digital media. Students are now learning that collaboration with their peers and teachers are as critical to collaborating with others from around the world.

Our students are living in a different world, an information technology world, and we must provide resources for students to actively engage and use the tools that have been developed for this 21st century world.

However, many teachers are still resisting to incorporating 21st century digital media into their classrooms. The articles explains that many teachers are reluctant to use digital tools that they are unfamiliar with, but that their students might show a strong interest and intellectual ability in it. I disagree because isn't the student-teacher relationship supposed to be reciprocal?

Many teachers are combining using the "original" ways to teaching literature, but incorporating digital media where necessary.

Many students are becoming writers and are improving on their writing through the popularity of blogs, wikis, writing fan based stories, keeping a MySpace or Facebook page etc. Students are writing for global audiences online as they post or keep these digital spaces, and are not just writing for the teacher aymore.

I like the last point this article makes. Through the use of digital media, students are sharing their writing with one another, using collaboration as a means of communication and educating one another, not only in academics, but in social and cultural ways as well.

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