My most influential communication technologies:
- Social networking
- Cell phones
- You tube
I think in general teachers need to use prior knowledge and experiences to teach new skills and concepts. A student’s relationship to technology is a good indicator of how easily they will learn new programs and skills on computers, as well as if you can use technology as a teaching-tool or device to empower the student’s education to be more independent. In Olivia's example, technology gives her self confidence from her web editing skills, and comfort.
I think all three technologies have impacted learning for me in everyday life. With social networking, I find that I can be involved in events around the world by people, news organizations, celebrities, wikileaks, etc. With new features like the Google + “hangout”, I’ve been able to have conferences with my friends over video chat. That’s huge. I’ve even had a trumpet lesson with my teacher via Facetime.
Cell phones are the ultimate portable studying device – when I need to know the answer to something in a class, or I’m curious to know more about something my professor said off-hand, I reach for my iPhone and use google. I read NPR and Al Jazeera every morning before classes from my iPhone. I’ve even put my schedule and PDFs on the iBook application because I always lose my papers anyways.
YouTube is a culture in itself. For example, the YouTube remix is becoming a quick staple in our culture. Videos are posted, and then edited with other materials as a response to the original video. It’s creative and is a way for us to use old materials to make something new. I use it to discover new music by using the related video section, and use it to discover new production techniques for when I compose electronic music.
There is a similarity to how I use those technologies and how the students represented in the videos do. I find that in both cases technology has made information more readily available to students than before. The needs of students can be met outside the classroom by online video workshops, and as one student put it, it’s not about the technology itself that is so amazing but how people experiment and implement it into their activities. I think students often feel alienated or frustrated by teachers’ lack of comfort and experience with the technologies they use.
There were a lot of points I agreed with in your post. One of them being how students get frustrated with teachers that have a significant lack of technological knowledge. It happens so often when a teacher needs to resort to technology, such as emailing or receiving attachments via email, and they either do not know how to go about doing it, or do not have the right tools to open the attachments(thats just one example, the list goes on). Not only does this aggravate students, but it gives students an upper hand in taking advantage of the teacher as well. I can remember many times with many different teachers where students would just say "Oh you never sent that" or "Oh I sent it to you, there was something wrong with your email" etc. I was also very interested in your use of things like video chat. To be honest, I have never used it for anything other than talking to friends, but you've really integrated into your everyday life and learning and I thought that was really impressive.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. There were a lot of things you mentioned such as facetime and apps for downloading documents that I didn't even know existed. I think it's really awesome that you were able to have a trumpet lesson via facetime. (I'm assuming this is similar to skype?) Another technology I thought was interesting was that you mentioned youtube. In the music world this really is a great resource whether it be a teaching aid, to listen to a piece or just get a feel for what kind of styles are out there.
ReplyDeleteI really like your post. I totally agree with you that teachers need to incorporate prior knowledges and experiences in their teachings and relate it to their students. I think its pretty sweet that you had a trumpet lesson with your instructor on facetime, how did that work out? I could only imagine having a trombone lesson on something like facetime, which I imagine would be slightly harder because of the slide. But I guess If i was farther away from the phone it'd be easier in that sense too to have a lesson on facetime, but still would be interesting. I also totally agree with you on the fact phones are like everything to us, like how you mentioned how its the ultimate study device and all. Phones are definitely very helpful in that sense and on the go. I feel like because our society is so driven on technology now, that itd be so much harder to do studying, or really anything without our trusty phone or computer.
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