Reflection- Growing Up Online

This wasn’t the first video I’ve seen about how the internet is changing the way kids grow up. We’ve been exposed to several since our first semester in proteach and I’ve seen many TV shows regarding this ever growing issue. The fact that 90% of teenagers have regular access to the internet is not surprising to me and I expect this number to increase by the time I become a teacher. There’s no doubt in my mind that many people feel this is a bad thing but to me, that’s irrelevant. The fact is that kid’s love technology and they’re really great at using it. Therefore, I hope to use this love of the internet, online games, chatting, text messaging and everything else to help my students enjoy learning when in my classroom.

This video didn’t impact my thinking about technology’s role in the lives of young learners all that much because it’s been a hot topic for some time. It did, however, give me some more great ideas about how to incorporate technology into my future classroom. I absolutely love the idea of podcasting lessons so that students can refresh themselves on the material. Also, answering questions via the computer or text message sounds like so much more fun than “raise your hand if you think it’s A”. Also, although the internet has made it easier for students to find sources to plagiarize from, websites like turnitin.com have really helped teacher combat this. My high school teachers used turnitin.com for a majority of our papers and the fear of being caught “in the red zone” really encouraged me to cite my sources and choose my paraphrasing wisely.

The mother in the video hit the nail on the head when she said “online is a continuation of [our kids] existence”. I think it’s really important that parents realize this. Young people love myspace, facebook, youtube and all of the current hot spots on the internet. One thing I don’t understand is why more parents are not taking advantage of this knowledge and using it to achieve whatever it is they’re looking for from their children. Resisting technology is useless and the sooner a person hops on board with the current advances the less behind they will be. Although this type of relationship may not be exactly what some parent’s had in mind, I feel that parents and teachers should embrace what the future generations are interested in because they’re living in the same world and technology is not going away. As the video said, the internet “has created the biggest generation gap since rock and roll” and rock and roll doesn’t seem to be fading any time soon.