The
bulk of chapter two of New Literacies was how a school for girls, Ridgeview,
was spending their time ‘policing’ the use of Internet time. This school used laptops for everything
each day. The teachers were at
odds over the types of things students ‘should be’ doing while online during
the school day, and what these girls were actually doing. I was amused at times over some of the
dialogue between the teachers. One teacher was distraught over dangers the
students could encounter while on the Internet, while another was upset because
they could be sneaking around and ‘blogging’ during the school day. They were concerned that it would
become a threat to the schools integrity.
I suppose it is a real concern, but it did tickle my funny bone a
little. J
Another
area that I found interesting was that one teacher found that the ‘laptops’
were “damaging to classroom interaction in that they distracted girls into
forms of communication and activity other than the core communicative activity
at hand” and also put up “physical barriers between the interlocutors in the
classroom.” (Page 36) The
laptops. Really? I think if the students’ are distracted
by having the laptop in front of them, then that is an easy problem to solve. Remove the distraction and make the
students focus on what is being discussed! To me, it sounds like a lot of the concerns of the faculty
could be taken care of with a little more time spent on disciplining the
students into doing the job set before them, and working harder to keep the
students’ attention. If the
students were more involved in the lessons, they wouldn’t be spending their
time on the ‘distractions’.
I feel that technology, such as laptops, has its time and place in the classroom, but to be accessible at all times is a little much. There are times when students need to be taught in traditional ways for example when they are learning to read or reading in general. I feel that students need book in their hands to receive the full effects of books. (I know I need to hold books to get the full effect) Students can learn to be dependent on technology and in the real world you might have to solve a problem all your own. Students need to be able to function without technologies!
ReplyDeleteI agree Crystal it all comes down to the classroom/school management set in place for laptop use. Like Tina said in her blog also, today's students are so technologically advanced that they will find ways around internet blocks. They also referred to them as a type of virtual kindergarten because they were not making use of all the advantages of these laptops.
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