Catching Up Part 1

It's pretty apparent that I have fallen far behind in my postings. I can chalk it up to doing the final push of marking right before Midterm Report Cards were due. My marks have been finalized and submitted and Report Cards go home on Friday. I find that I've been very good at sticking to one week turnaround for my marking this semester, but I've been negligent with my readings and postings here on the blog. Hopefully over the course of the next few days I'll be able to push through some readings and post some responses.

I like how when we look at the course readings there are all these hyperlinks to other readings and videos that we can explore. I think I started out looking at the NetGen Skeptic and then ended up watching a video from Oxford University that was looking at "resident" versus "visitor" categories of Internet users. This sort of builds upon Prensky's ideas related to "digital natives" and "digital immigrants". I don't know if I agree with Prensky's thesis. I find that it is very "black" and "white" in its categorization of people into these broad categories of people that have grown up digitally with ubiquitous technology all around them and others that have to learn about digital tools, and even if they learn how to use these digital tools they will have some sort of "accent" online. Sure, kids today have the world at their fingertips, they think nothing of the amount of information that they have access to just with a few clicks of the mouse, and there are adults that definitely don't know as much about technology as kids. I do find that young people are very knowledgeable about technology that they use repeatedly, but in other areas they may be quite ignorant. For example, with certain Web 2.0 tools and social networking sites students are able to pick things up quickly and run with it. I'm sure the students in my classroom know how to use Facebook really well, and how to upload videos to YouTube like nobody's business, but when it comes to using other Webs 2.0 productivity tools, their knowledge may be scant. I also think that there is a difference between how the current generation of students that I'm teaching views privacy and how I view privacy. They have "digital footprints" all over the web, and may be too open and too sharing of personal information online. I think it is exciting to teach students today, I just wish that I could use fully the Web 2.0 tools that are at my disposal because some of them are so easy to use, with minimal instruction, they can figure out to use them rather quickly. I guess I just have a problem being labelled "digital immigrant" or a "visitor", either way it feels like I'm on the outside looking in.

I also had a quick peek at the book review for Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.  One quote that stood out for me in the interview when John Palfrey said, "A key advantage of using technology in education is that, through its use, we can give young people the digital media learning skills that they need. Right now, we are not teaching young people to sort credible information from less credible information online, despite the proliferation of sources and the extent to which we know young people are relying on such sources. Technology can also be very engaging and interactive and -- truly -- fun for young people to use as they learn." In this part of the interview Palfrey is talking about technology not being a panacea, and using technology for the sake of using technology. He's also talking about making sure that educators teach students being able to sort through the massive amount of information that they have access to, and being able to find credible information. I also find that students also are tempted by the easy access to information, and not understanding the difference between common knowledge and not knowing what would be considered plagiarism. A lot of students think that copying and pasting something from the Internet and "putting it in their own words" (this usually consists of extensive use of a thesaurus) will suffice. despite the fact that I go over proper research techniques prior to any research project and talking about how to avoid plagiarism it still happens a lot. I find that students will try it despite my warnings. I warn them that my first degree was a Bachelor of Arts in History and that I am very good at doing research, and that I'm probably better at it than they are at doing it. If they can find something easily online, so can I. Almost every semester I catch a student plagiarizing and they receive a zero for the assignment. At least it gives me an excuse to play a scene from "Good Will Hunting" and we can talk about plagiarism and how being unoriginal is one of the worst things to be.