First Impressions

Today’s class was a bit intense in terms of the amount of topics discussed. I think my brain is still in vacation mode and I had to stop and really process what we were all saying about our early interactions with technology and our best learning moments. I think we all bring forth different ideas and it will be interesting to see what we all focus on for our final projects!

In the first short film we watched today, A Vision of K-12 Students Today, I found myself holding my breath at some of the statistics. While I have seen the video before, I am always amazed at how much students do in a day. This current generation multitasks as much as possible in order to stay connected. While technology is an amazing tool, I sometimes wonder if there is too much emphasis on being connected with one another, but completely understand the various ways in which technology is useful. I was sad to see how much some students said they would read on the Internet versus what they would read in terms of the curriculum. I am always wondering how much my students are actually reading and what they are skimming on the web from Sparknotes and other resources. I have to stop at times and think about whether some students are bringing in authentic ideas and opinions or if they are just telling me what they think I want to hear. I think a great way for me to break the students from this “I’m going to tell Ms. Dunbar what she wants to hear and stop talking” epidemic, is utilizing video clips and other visuals to have the students analyze and look at what is really going on. When we viewed Beauty and the Beast to discover the secret education that Linda Christensen discusses, I found it to be really interesting. It is a great way to show students that when we look at things for enjoyment, we often graze over the other messages that are being presented, but when looking at the same show with a more intense purpose, things begin to stand out. This skill of digital analysis once truly understood can be transferred to the closer reading of a text which can help further the students’ abilities of creating interesting papers and establishing more focused and insightful class discussions.

I think this class is going to give me a new perspective on how I am teaching my students and what I am placing value on. I am aware of needing to include more technology in my classroom as it helps to increase student engagement, but I also need to have the students interact with tools they have no used before. I would love to establish blogs or maybe even a wiki space for my students to encourage a constant conversation amongst the classroom community and see how they do with it. I find blogging to be interesting, but also time consuming and is making me feel extremely vulnerable. I suppose discussing my weaknesses with my students is not a bad thing, just an uncomfortable feeling for me.