Enter a reflective journal entry post on your blog. Pick a topic or issue from the readings that struck you as interesting, important, confusing, etc. and reflect on it in by responding to the following prompts:
- What is / are the tools and techniques (or new skills) being put into practice?
- What is / are the key issue(s) outlined in or underlying the text (think in terms of Green’s model: operational, cultural and critical)?
- What are your feelings and opinions on the reading?
- Be sure to reference the reading including author and page number.
This weeks reading was a long but very in depth reading about many things that I have never thought about. I thought that Jenkins made a great case about how much time all of the kids now days spend playing video games and on social media sites that we can actually teach them through those different means. With the world becoming more and more technology based we would be doing our children a disservice if we were not using all of these different forms to teach them. The best part about using these different forms of technology to teach the kids is that they like using it and therefore making learning enjoyable and we all know that we take more out of anything if we find it enjoyable.
With all of the new technology out there it is hard to stay up with all of them. just in the past few years we have gone from desktop computer to laptops, to tablets, and now to the cell phone which is a tablet. This has made teaching easier and harder in many ways. I am by no means a technology wiz therefore figuring out how to use the new stuff can be very challenging at times, however, with the technology comes a new engagement that we have not seen in our kids in a long while. If you need proof of this just walk into two classrooms that are teaching the same material, with one teaching using technology in many different ways to present material versus the other teacher that is standing at the front of the room and going through a powerpoint of slides explaining them to the students. You will see for yourself what technology does for these kids in the classroom it can take them to new heights that have never been reached before.
This culture has changed drastically over the years from a farming culture to an industrial culture and now to a much more social culture. Every day we as Americans are connected in some way using the internet on mobile devices. "Mobile phones, emails and browsing for information are an increasing part of everyday experience for many people" (Varnelis, 2008, pg. 25). People are now taking vacations to places where there is no reception so that they can get away from the world. It use to be you would go home and you were by yourself but now you go home and it is like there are billions of people there with you because of the internet. I do have mixed feelings about how easily we are connected to the entire world. It does make things a lot easier, I do not think I need to go into that as we all can think of many ways that being connected has made something a lot easier, but on the same hand I just wish that we could just be by ourselves at times without anyone else knowing or wanting to know anything about what is going on.
References:
Jenkins, H. (2006, October 19). Digital Media & Learning. Retrieved September 27, 2016,
from https://www.macfound.org/press/publications/white-paper-confronting-the-challenges-
of-participatory-culture-media-education-for-the-21st-century-by-henry-jenkins/
Varnelis, K.(Ed.).(2008). Networked Publics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Jenkins, H. (2006, October 19). Digital Media & Learning. Retrieved September 27, 2016,
from https://www.macfound.org/press/publications/white-paper-confronting-the-challenges-
of-participatory-culture-media-education-for-the-21st-century-by-henry-jenkins/
Varnelis, K.(Ed.).(2008). Networked Publics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
