POST #4: Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts

In her classes she is not always at the front, teaching to the students. Sometimes, students teach to students, or students even teach to the teacher. The teacher does not have to know everything and he/she can learn a lot from the students.

I definitely agree with Vicki Davis's way of teaching. I think it is a great philosophy. Internet is so full of resources, it is a very good thing to teach them how to learn with these resources. If students develop the reflex to google a word they do not know, they will learn to do it out of class too. I do it all the time. When I talk with someone and they talk about something that I don't know, I will be curious and will surely go look on google for it. I want my students to have the same reflex.

Teaching with technologies is also a good way to give students the power to be autonomous. If they are taught how to use the resources that are available to them effectively, they will be able to learn more things by themselves. They will have the power to teach to other students and even to the teacher. This can give a lot of confidence to the students. 

I think is a very good thing that students collaborate with students around the world. They can learn how to work with strangers, see different point of views and most importantly learn about other cultures by being in touch with it. Once again, it can give a lot of confidence to the students, if they share their work with students around the world.

To connect the students to the world, you can use blogs or wikis. With a blog, students can create posts and share them with the whole world. They can receive comments. They can also go look at other blogs from students and classes of anywhere in the world. Wikis are a good idea too. A class wiki can be shared with the school, the country or the world. Every student can participate. And wikis are amazing resources, they can learn from their class mates, or from wikis of another class.

New technologies are great resources and I truly believe that teachers need to include them to their classes.

Big Thinkers: Henry Jenkins on New Media and Implications for Learning and Teaching

The video  we watched this week was about the implications of the new medias in learning and teaching. M. Jenkins tackled different points in his video. He talked about the difference between some kids that have an acces to different technologies out of school and other kids that only have access to these technologies at school. He also talked about not thinking of digital environment as a place where there are natives and  immigrants. Natives are people who have been immersed in technology since their young age and immigrants are people that were introduced to technologies after adulthood. There shouldn't be a difference because with collaborative work anyone can be on the same level. Teachers and students can share their knowledge and teachers can share among other teachers too. M. Jenkins also identified 12 socials skill that are important for students to be full participants with these new medias. He said that there should be a shift in the way of teaching everything with the use of the new medias. He also talked about what is acceptable in terms of copyright and about setting norms and explaining them to the students. Finally he talked about creating games integrating technology to the learned of other knoledge.

We have 5 questions to guide our reflection. Let's take a look at these questions.
1. How are schools limiting kids' access to digital tools? Do you agree with these policies?
Schools can prevent kids from accessing ressources they know online buy having too much filtering. If the school's filtering program is too strict and blocks everything, a lot of ressources will be blocked by accident. I think it is a good idea to block some sites (like facebook) but word should's be blocked, because sometimes, words can have more then one meaning. And even if one meaning of the word is bad, the other meaning can be good.
Also, I do not agree with school policies that block youtube. It is one of the best ressources we have online. Of course some videos are stupid and not very enriching for the students but other videos can be really helpful. There are a lot of tutorials about anything of even conferences on youtube. It is a great ressource that should not be blocked by schools.


2. Do you see the participation gap in your school and community?

Yes I have seen a gap between students at the university. Some people were not at ease with using new technologies to work at school. And other students are technology experts. A good thing is that these students enjoy working together. This way, the technology experts can share they knowledge to the people that are not at ease with these new medias. It creates a good opportunity for learners to share their knowledge. 

3. How do we create shared learning opportunities across generations?

A good way is to create occasions for the most proeficient people to work with the people that are not used to the new medias. This will create a learning opportinity for both sides. One side will learn how to use technology with more ease and the other will learn to share their knowledge in a good way. 

4. Are schools ready to give up control to kids, families, and communities of learning? What are the opportunities and challenges? 

I do not think that schools are ready to give up control to kids. Teachers are too used to have complete control and it would be unsettling for older teachers to let the control to the kids. Maybe in some years where there will be a shift in teachers, there will also be a shift in the ways of teaching and learning.

5. What does authorship mean in the digital age? How do we teach it to kids? 

Authorship and copyright are controversial things in the digital age.  I believe that any work can be used as long as the author is given credit. It depends more of your norms then of the laws. It is a good way to explain the norms of the community to the kids. This way they will know what is alright and what is not. They need to be taught to respect authorship as soon a they have to work with the work of others, this way, it will become natural to them .