EME6414 Blog

 This week really focused on the concept of digital natives and their abilities with technology. Overall, my takeaway is that instructors, educators, and teachers must make space to teach digital natives how to effectively use technology. Many kids of today do not grow up with computers- they are expensive and not accessible to all families. I think it is similar to how not all kids grow up being read to- everyone has a different experience in their home and educators, especially at the elementary and secondary level, cannot make assumptions that their students will already know how to use a laptop or Chromebook. However, I do think it is important to acknowledge that many members of younger generations do engage in produsage through their phones. They create TikToks and social media posts on a daily basis, they just have to be taught the skills needed to translate these produsage skills through more technological mediums. It is up to the instructor, no matter what level they are t...

  How do middle school students see technology as affecting their education and lives?  This week I decided to sit down and have some conversations with my students before releasing them for the summer. I asked them specifically how they felt technology had influenced their education and social lives. These were some of the responses I got, paraphrased from the general Gen Z vernacular: "I think that technology can be cool, but it can also be repetitive. Some teachers do the same things over and over, which gets old."  'I wish I could only be on my Chromebook all the time. It's more fun than anything else in class."  "I don't want technology to take over my life. I think the 90s were cool, people talked to each other more." "Okay, but I talk to people all the time, just on my phone."  "My chromebook helps me learn, I don't like doing book work because it is boring,"  "I like book work, I can understand it better."  ...

  Thoughts on the Education of Digital Natives   As M ay comes to a close, I am finishing my 8 th year as an educator in the public education system. I have worked as an ELA teacher for grades 6-12, taught Creative Writing and Journalism, and am finishing my second year as a media specialist in a middle school. I consider myself to be a digital native- we got our first computer when I was around 7 or 8 years old. However, I do think my experience with technology has been very different from my students because I have lived through the hyper-speed evolution of technology. Computers look very different now from when we got our first fa mily computer in the early 2000s, but the biggest difference is that most of my students do not start their technology journey with a computer, but with a cell phone.   One of the biggest gaps in digital education I see at the secondary level is a lac k of direct instruction on how to use technology effectively. I think that because our ...

  Week 1 Reflection This week I focused on the use of social media as an instructional tool, specifically at the secondary level. Working in a middle school brings the constant fight for student engagement and the battle against apathy. One thing that I'm sure people with children of all ages find is that students generally engage with their phones on social media more than anything else. It is where many of their social interactions come from. Unfortunately, it can also deeply affect young people's sense of self-worth and their image: social media is not often truthful about the realities of life. However, the emotional part of social media use can also be used for good in terms of the learning environment. Social media, likes, follows, and comments are important to young individuals and often trigger an emotional response. Using social media in the classroom can be a means of engagement, as long as students are given clear guidelines on how to use it appropriately and in a pr...

Teaching & Learning in the Age of Social Media   One thing about me is I LOVE a good TedTalk, and will probably post a few throughout the duration of this blog. This week I looked specifically at how Social Media and education can interact. This video struck me because it focused so heavily on my current field: secondary education. The speaker of this video posed a very important question: How do we as educators pose questions to our students when almost every question is "Googleable?" I think this question is also vital to think about when using AI in the classroom- what do we do when students can have a machine write their paper in 5 seconds or less?  Luckily, I think this is where teaching is really of the most importance. A student may be able to AI generate a paper, but a good teacher WILL generally catch that the paper is not the student's own work. We have AI checkers to combat this, but we also know our students because we talk to them and get to know them as ...

  Interactions with Social Media Pre-EME6414 For my first post, it felt appropriate to think about the ways I already utilize social media. Currently, I have accounts on the following platforms: Instagram (since high school) Facebook (since high school) Threads (for about a year) BeReal (about two years) Snapchat (since high school)  Pinterest (since high school) Reddit (since high school) Logically, I know social media can be used professionally. It is a great way to form larger and more diverse learning communities for a variety of skills. Social media is a huge part of advertising and influencer as a career is at an all-time high. This is even reflected in our other cultural media. For example, the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives exists because a group of women made a career out of TikTok, referring to it as "MomTok." However, I have very mixed feelings about the use of social media and do not use it to the extent that many people do. For me, doom scrolling o...