We live in a a multi-media intensive world , and our children have fully adopted every facet as an intrinsic part of our culture!
We can only get them to focus on any one particular thing ,if it is sugar coated with technology produced by experts of a $7.3 billion industry. Budgets for high profile games range from $10 - $12 million . Presentations must be mind capturing .
Today , the romance between our schools and technology presents the view that , wherever there are computers students are learning? but technology does not guarantee effective learning. As a matter of fact the inappropriate uses of technology can hinder learning . We all are aware how consuming the computer can be , and sometimes we waste so much time surfing that we sometimes forget the real reason we we were online in the first place.
So then what can we do to keep students focussed ? Lets consider the case of asking students to read books from the International children's digital library! Great site... ,lots of colors ,lots of choices to make .
Here the interface is visual, the softare enables children to search by criteria that were selected by children-for example ;
--the country the book is from
--the genre
--the characters
--the language
--the color of the book
--the shape or color of the book
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2 comments:
Gloria,
I agree with you thoughts about technology not helping some of our students. Most of them find it fascinating but others may not. My topic in 668 was Aliteracy and I can across a different approach to the subject, Information Aliteracy, students who do not want to complete research due to using technology. These students are not interested in using computers at all to do research. They either have not been properly taught or they are overwhelemed by the technology itself. Whatever the reason, we need to be aware that while all these wonderful 2.0 technologies seem great, they might not help some of our students learn to the best of their ability.
I agree with you Margie. Many of my students just want to have fun on the computers and as you rightly say they do not want to do research.
We are now facing a new problem , how can we keep them focussed? I have had some very difficult times where a whole period finishes and the task they are supposed to do was not completed. Reason , as soon as I moved away from the computer they would shift the screento something else that they want to do. Who has the time to stand over them just to make sure the work is done? Wow! I think we are in a tight spot!
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