Chapter+2

Chapter 2 - Students and Learning - Francis

This chapter is about students, and how todays education system, was not built for the children of the 21st century. The standardized testing and scoring has taken away the importance of technological understanding in the classroom, and important and necessary understanding that could help students in the future.

"Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach" (Prensky, 2001).

Some Statistics : 71% of American households have web access. 79% play video games 65 %of students in grades 6-12 email, and use instant messenger

"Having digital technology at their fingertips all the time means that students think, work, and play differently from previous generations" (Web 2.0, pg 27). --This is a pretty strong statement, if you think about it, the way kids learn today is completely different from all previous generations. Historically, you learned what you wished to learn whether it was passed down to you orally, or you read something which was printed. Ever since the introduction of media and technology individuals are force fed information they don't really care about, and need to process what they wish to take in. Studying via the printed word is somewhat dead, most research is done off a computer screen through a database, and it needs to be fast. Historically, audiences would sit down for several hours to listen to presidential speeches, or lectures. For example, Lincoln and Douglas's presidential debate lasted over 7 hours. So we can ask ourselves now, would we ever willingly sit through a 7 hour debate in which we went home, ate dinner and then came back? --So i guess from all of this we should take in that students minds now work differently, their will to learn, and ability to hold concentration is completely different, so it is up to teachers to use this technology, that students now are so fluent with, correctly and effectively.
 * The times of listening to speeches and debates for such a long time are definitely over. Today, if there is a presidential speech or debate, you can read a summary online of what went on within an hour of the speech or debate being over. Because everything is done so speedily these days, people have grown more impatient. People do not want to sit and watch a debate for seven hours anymore because so much more can be accomplished in seven hours today then during the times of the Lincoln vs. Douglas debate.
 * What is most worrying to me is that, aside from this class, we as teachers really are not trained to use all of this technology. Also, we are currently being trained to be teachers. There are plenty of older teachers out there that are probably great teachers, but were never trained to use this type of technology effectively in the classroom because it was not around when they were in college. I think these teachers probably face even more problems than than we do because at least we are aware of and know how to use this technology.

"Students come to school knowledgeable about the web and its potential, are comfortable using it, and expect learning in school to be more like learning on their own." (pg 30).

"Because they have the tools at their fingertips to publish their work online, they become resources for other students' research" (40) --Here we can see the positives of technology around students. Not only can they search deep into certain topics and gather information from experts on both sides of a certain topic, they can become experts themselves and share information with their peers.
 * I think this idea is exemplified by when we use the discussion board on Blackboard and when we blog. For instance, when we had to write in the discussion board about podcasts, I learned a lot of new information just by looking at what my classmates had written. This is one way that everything has become so much faster in our society. Earlier, I would have had to search for all those podcasts on my own. However, my search time was cut down infinitesimally because all I had to do was look at what my 20+ classmates had written, and I had about 60 more podcasts right in front of me.

The book outlines some goals -to provide an education that prepares students to have 21st century skills and also to ace the test (standardized testing) without breaking stride -they need to harness the students energy and curiosity they have towards technology and use it in order to create better understanding of subject matter.