I know I just posted earlier this evening, but I was counting my blog entries and for some reason the numbers don't add up and I seemed to have missed one somewhere...not to mention that fact that I had a thought or two and wanted to share it.
Several of us have blogged during this semester about the technologies that are available for use by high school students...let's face it, it's out there...they've got it and they are using it. Yet for some reason (as I've noticed especially being involved in the review of our district's computer usage policy) school districts seem hesitant to embrace it. We tell the kids..."put away the cell phones...close the IM...take out the headphones...get out of the games...put away the iPods..." for me at least...this has become a daily litany
So as I was teaching what I consider to be one of my better lessons of the semester on color theory, I made one of my occassional random comments to see how many of the kids were actually listening to the words coming out of my mouth. Looking around, I saw, one kid with headphones in his ears, one texting under his desk where he thought I couldn't see him and several more playing games and IM'ing...interestingly, they all looked at me when I made the comment...most of them were actually listening...
My next comment to them (all names have been changed) was, "Heck...I should stream my lesson through Joey's headphones, text it to Michael and IM it to Jessica and Susan and then I'd know you were all getting it." Suprisingly, they all laughed and said they thought that was a great idea...
hmmm........the possibilities are endless...but how on earth could you manage it ! Each year that goes by the kids get more and more tech savy (they found my story of how I had to manually load MS-DOS and Norton Textra onto the computers in college kind of amusing -- I know...I just dated myself there :) ) I am personally both very excited and very frightened at what my classroom is going to look like in another 10 years.
Who knows...I may be texting them their assignments in the near future (I'm actually getting better at it...I use both hands now :) )
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2 comments:
Rose , this was a great post. Technology provides so many opportunities, and distractions, for younger students today. Being able to relate and communicate effectively with them is a constant challenge. Texting to students is an option I think that few teachers would seriously consider right now. But then again, it may be effective in reaching out and getting students to learn in an informal manner. Related to your post, I read an article that was published only a few days ago about teenagers and their texting habits showing up in school work. Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9050629?source=rss
Basically, there was a national study of teenagers that showed that they are using informal texting speech (LOL, ROTFL, etc.) and emoticons in their homework and writing assignments. This study made national headlines and actually sparked a lot of controversy! I know I read more than a few articles and blogs with sharp opinions about the results of this study. Of course there are two points of view to every story.
One side argues that it’s NBD (no big deal) and that you can consider it a natural evolution of language. I studied linguistics and anthropology for my undergraduate degree, and there is a natural law that languages always change over time. So the fact that teenagers are expressing the same ideas with a new vocabulary is not surprising. I can think back to the 1980’s when we used to say “rad”, and “bad” actually meant “good”!
But of course there is another valid argument to be made. Standardization of language is a hot topic right now. Standardization of a language is where a group of people or a society adopts a standard set of linguistic rules (i.e. “proper grammar”) and establishes what language elements are not acceptable. For example, the French have an organization called “L'Académie française” or “The French Academy” that continually reviews foreign terms “creeping” into the French language, such as the English word for computer. They come up with a French equivalent for the word, and then they “ban” the English word “computer” from being used (they have no real legal authority however).
But the point to this is that there are some who consider texting to be a threat to education because it is a series of abbreviations for words with no real set of guidelines. Some argue that it makes students lazy and unable to properly spell words, and ultimately lead to an inability to form complex thoughts. One of my anthropology professors still gives tests where students have to write very long essays using a pencil and paper, and he is amazed at the amount of spelling and grammatical errors. He recounted to me that students today are unable to sit in a chair for several hours to complete his test, recall information from his lectures, and spell out common anthropology related vocabulary necessary to communicate ideas to peers in this community.
So as to whether texting is a “bad” phenomenon that is a symptom of our technology saturated youth is something that will only be determined by future generations.
Brian and Rose I wonder if short hand sparked such controversy when it was introduced? Maybe this is just people getting upset since they do not understand the language this kids are using. Any way just writting C U later.
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