21st Century Students and Technology

How will you be your own agent of change in the classroom to meet student expectations - is it your responsibility?















As I said before, I believe in regards to the Ken Robinson video, I think students would most benefit from having a technology class separate from regular subjects to learn how to "create." This demand for technology education incorporated into every class does not leave much room for content. In the video from Kansas State University, the students keep asking "What are we learning?" Why is factual information so undervalued in these videos? Yes, students need to learn how to analyze and evaluate information and new, relative to the present information so that they can evolve in the future. But this process does not take place in a historical vaccuum. Students need to learn the content and facts (as close as one can actually atain them) to be able to place new information in context and, then, analyze and evaluate. I don't believe students and teachers should be slaves to "essentialist," traditional content, but students do need to learn what has happened in the past and, most importantly, WHY. As a future history teacher and a current history major, in always considering the future classroom, I must look to the past, and I want my students to be able to do the same and have a full and thorough understanding of that past, which they will mainly gain through teachers' instruction and books. The most disappointing part of both videos is the statistic regarding how little students read (books or at least something of substance) and how much time they spend looking at Facebook profiles. When I consider the prompt question of change, I think about the underlying message of the videos. The change they are talking about is competitive (blatantly with China) in terms of business and industry. I am not going into teaching to "create" a bunch of little American industrialists who can "create" a "better" web page than a little Chinese industrialist. I am looking to inspire human change and betterment. Students who think about others and empathize, who do not repeat the same repetitive mistakes of history. If, as the video presents, an eight year old girl is already "a digital native," what is really left for me to teach her about technology by the time she is in high school. Her technological education will greatly outpace mine I am sure.