TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM Alesha Kelker

Table of Contents

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Conclusion References

“To make responsive and meaningful changes to curriculum

and pedagogy, teachers need to understand

the young people who populate their classrooms.

They need to know what they do in their out of school

lives; they need to know what engages their interest

and what does not. They also need to know what sophisticated

skills young people bring to classrooms and

how they might be better used for language and literacy

learning” (Tarasiuk, 2010, p.545).

Combining Traditional and Contemporary Texts: Moving My English Class to the Computer Lab

Tracy J. Tarasiuk

Artricle is about incorportating contemporary literacy that students are involved in outside of school into the study of traditional texts that are required by the schools.

Teachers should take advantage of adolescents’ out of school literacies to make their teaching more relevant for all students.

Students personal use of contemporary literacy can help teachers establish meaningful experiences for them in the classroom.

Schools should expand on their ideas of instruction and treat it as reading and writing for the purpose of communicating in traditional and contemporary ways using multiple tools and resources.

If we allow students the freedom to incorporate their own knowledge of contemporary literacy into learning it will help us as teachers to plan the most effective lesson plans for the students.

Personal Reflection

“Students involvement with information and communication is their literacy. The technology that students are involved with outside of the school provides processes of learning that are deeper and richer than the forms of learning to which they are exposed” (Tarasiuk, 2010, p. 544).

This quote really summarizes the article. The information that students come across with technology really is their literacy. It is the way that they understand and process information. Teachers need to understand this and try to incorporate this type of information into their curriculum and lesson plans to make learning more relatable and understandable to the students. I think that the second part of this quote is not necessarily true. I think traditional learning is very rich and is how we have been teaching students for years. Rather than basically saying technology that the students use is better than what we expose them to in classrooms it should say that technology combined with traditional teaching would give students a deeper and richer form of learning.

“An ample and growing body of research shows us that

adolescents are expert users of many and varied forms and

technologies of literacy. Their practices are purposeful and

sophisticated, and they use literacy to do the kinds of things

people have always done with literacy. As most parents

of adolescents know very well, kids are more likely to be

expert at emerging information and communications technologies

than their parents or their teachers are. They have

sophisticated viewer literacies—understandings about how

video, TV, and film work and vast reserves of knowledge

about how what they are watching now exists in dialogue

with older stories, characters, and forms” (Bauerlein, 2009, p.5).

The New BibliophobesMark Bauerlein

Article explains the decline in the reading and use of books by our students.

The rise of digital devices have made books a lesser literacy.

The use of books has changed, and we should recognize that there is a new order of reading and text in the world.

The twenty-first century economy that we live in requires rapid communication and faster transfer of information so our teens do not have time to read books and gain information in that way.

The article explains that in order for young adults to be successful in our society they have to master the practices of digital life.

“Digital literacy is a full- fledged intellectual practice, a mode of reading and learning a lot more exciting and promising than the old kinds” (Bauerlein, 2009, p.3)

“Today’s digital youth are in the process of creating a new kind of literacy, which extends beyond the traditions of reading and writing into an evolving community of expression and problem-solving that is changing not only their world, but ours, as well” (Bauerlein, 2009, p.6).

“Today’s young people don’t suffer from illiteracy; they just suffer from e-literacy We can’t spell and we don’t know synonyms because there’s less need to know. What smart person would devote hours to learning words that can be accessed at the click of a button? Spell-check can spell. Shift+F7 produces synonyms. What is wrong with relying on something that is perfectly reliable” (Bauerlein, 2009, p.6)?

Quotes

Personal Reflection

The quotes on the previous slide were three passages that really stood out to me. They summarize the article very well by describing this authors thoughts on how books are primarily obsolete and that technology has taken over in our youths gathering of information. Their use of technology is changing the world around us and we need to adopt this new way of getting information in order to stay on top of things and make school topics relatable to them and the world in which they will be contributing to in the future. Although this article is not directly tied to technology in the classroom and educators using it to teach I think it ties in with that idea because it backs up the idea that in order to be successful students have to be proficient in technology and so we should incorporate technology into the classroom in order to help them be successful in the subject matter that we are teaching. The third quote listed on the previous slide I believe to be somewhat controversial. Even though the computer does do basically everything for us such as spell check, I do think it is important for our students to know the basics and be able to do those things on their own because computers and technology have been known to fail and it is important in situations when something like that may happen that the students know the basics and can apply them to their own work.

Gen Y: Who They Are and How They Learn

Alison Black

The article explains how today’s students are dependent on technology and have been called “digital natives.”

Being dependent on technology impacts how students learn and how they need to be taught.

Educators should become aware of the changing characteristics of today’s students and how they can best address their changing needs in education.

Digital natives generation processes and thinks about information differently. Educators need to take this known information and apply it to their lessons.

“The ultimate goal of education is helping students gain the skills to live, learn, and work successfully within society. Today that means becoming information seekers and evaluators as well as problem-solvers and decision-makers. Overcoming the constraints of time and space, information technology serves as a tool of empowerment for the individual. It is the challenge of educators today to support and utilize this extraordinary tool in meeting these needs” (Black, 2008, p.100).

Personal Reflection

“Schools are stuck in the twentieth century. Students have rushed into the twenty-first century. How can schools catch up and provide students a relevant education” (Black, 2008, p.95)?

This is a question in the article. It summarizes it very well because the article is basically stating that our students are very technologically advanced and if we want to make our school subjects relatable to them we need to incorporate technology into our classrooms. Educators need to become aware of the technology that is out their and educate themselves on that technology and than become creative with their subjects to incorporate that technology in their lesson plans. We are preparing the students for the future and the in the future lies technology so we need to prepare to use technology to learn and use in an educational way on a daily basis.

Conclusion

After reading all three articles I have come to the conclusion that it is important for us as educators to observe our students and understand their use of technology. Than incorporate that technology into our classroom to make our lesson plans and subject matter not only more exciting and enjoyable for the students but also more relatable to them and what the future society has in store for them.

References

Bauerlein, Mark, (2009). The New Bibliophobes. Penguin Group.

Black, Alison, (2008). Gen Y: Who They Are andHow They Learn. London: British Library andJoint Information Systems Committee.

Tarasiuk, Tracy J., (2010). Combining Traditional and Contemporary Texts: Moving My EnglishClass to the Computer Lab. Illinois: International Reading Association.