Has digital media changed our students?
The UTS Online literature provided by the Macarthur Foundation (2006) (a Youtube Video) on digital learning raises some interesting yet predictable thoughts. I must agree that todays student is a lot more technologically savvy than ever before and the same ‘offenders’ are thrown around in this video “myspace, MSN, messenger amnd blogging sites’. My issue with this is what are they actually doing when they are involved with these sites? Is it constructive, is it necessary? Or are they simply ‘wasting time’?
The idea of the students spending leisure time on these mediums of digi media, their time out, is fine, but wouldnt confusion ensue if suddenly the digital world became associated with schooling? Would the students think its perfectly acceptable to have their Facebook tab on the screen, minimised, but on the screen nevertheless as a distraction.
This issue deals with Biancas thoughts on the idea of ICT as a distraction and the trust you place in the students to actually do the set work and not be off task on other sites, but I go further in saying that a good teacher has enough ICT on hand, in the average classroom, coupled with sound teaching strategies, that they should be able to engage the students enough to achieve meaningful learning without using ICT for the sake of it.
