Building A Learning Community Reflection

The two videos that were shared were really meaningful to me because I had Professor Wesch as my Cultural Anthropology Professor at K-State. While my class wasn’t featured on the video, I knew many of the people that participated. I really recommend anyone that attends K-State to take a class from him. He really practices what he preaches in the video!

I am considered a “Digital Native.” However, I feel conflicted in this comparison. My teachers were all “Digital Immigrants” and I thrived in that environment. In my education, I resisted technology because I enjoyed lecture and working paper and pencil math problems. My current students, however, are not this way. They are multi-tasking individuals who can listen to music, watch television, and work on homework all at the same time. Thus, it is important to simulate this environment in my classroom. Students are allowed to listen to music while they work on their assignments. If this is how they study and work best, then it should be acceptable in the classroom.

I really enjoyed Marc’s comments on making the material into video games. Video games are a huge part of my student’s lives. They constantly talk about their experiences in class. I have found many resources online that incorporate math problems into computer games. Students feel more comfortable working problems in this fashion than the standard worksheet. In order to prepare for state assessments, I create web-quests that are like scavenger hunts where students link to different websites and games to practice their math skills. In my upper level math classes, we work with online graphing calculators and simulators to help make predictions. I also encourage my students to research the internet for resources that best work for them. There are thousands of YouTube videos that work through different math concepts in shorter amounts of time and that can be played over and over again.

One major conflict with the technology debate that I have occurs when you have students that want to go to college and take upper level math classes. In my experiences, these classes where in large lecture halls with hundreds of students. They were lectured based classes that relied on homework and tests. IPods and laptops were not allowed to be used. Thus, if students go through their K-12 schooling, and are surrounded by technology, what will happen when they reach college where the “Digital Immigrant” way is king? I am not saying that all college classes are like this, but the majority of mine were. If students have never been exposed to this type of learning atmosphere, will they be able to thrive in college? Thus, I make sure I balance my classroom activities between the “Digital Immigrant” way and they “Digital Native” way. Hopefully this helps the current way students learn and still prepares those who wish to complete higher education.