week 3

Preface -

This past week started off with a head cold that kept me home a day from work.  But this was also my last week of our 6th grade basketball season and my team was undefeated so the cold had to take as much of a back seat as it could.  It also, coincidently, was the first week of the 6^th grade math remediation for Istep class that yours truly will be teaching for the next ten weeks.  Needless to say, I was really looking forward to this weekend. 

See one of the reasons I wanted to take W-531 Computers in Education was because I am aware that I am stuck right in-between the Generation X and The Millenniums.  I’m not computer illiterate and yet it’s not my native tongue either.  I have to be honest, and I hope not to offend anyone.  Boy, has this Voicethread project been frustrating.  I know I have been told to not let it get to me, but it still won’t let me edit and add my input.  What's been very interesting since starting this class, is watching my students when they use the computers during class.  As much as I’ve been reading about this generation being digital natives and watching videos of babies knowing how to navigate an iphone, I’m in class with students who don’t know how to navigate through Microsoft Word.  I guess I’m confused now as to what’s going on.  Are our students beyond what we consider to be essential technology?  Are we moving too slowly and need to pick up the pace and get with the times?  Or are our digital natives intuitive to a screen and apps yet still need basic training on how to truly make their technology work for them?  Personally from what I see in this generation coming up is tremendous ability with a lack of ambition.  Not to say they are all this way, because obviously that’s not it, but too many of my students just want to find play with technology.  If they are asked to learn with it I might as well be asked them to pick up a book and read.  Maybe I’m jumping ahead but I hope we discuss the idea that a lot of our students see technology as nothing more than entertainment and not tools to work with.