Digital Post Blog # A Chapter 1

   I did observing hours today for one of my college courses and it made me think of one of my concepts that I’m going to be discussing and that’s a digital childhood. I was observing in a high school, I haven’t been in my old high school for 9 years. Looking around all I saw was technology. Beats by Dre. Head phones, cellphone and tablets. I even saw a kid walking around with a modern day boom box.  Still shocking to see walking the halls of a high school. I remember when I was younger and although we had many of those things that I saw today, the main difference was the acceptance of the technology devices in the school. The teacher himself told me that he doesn't even try to argue with the students on putting those things away because the work is still getting done. It’s true that many of these students that are now seniors in high school grew up with a digital childhood, to them this behavior is normal, and to me I was honestly quite stunned. We were also in the computer lab so I was defiantly surrounded by technology today.  The differences 9 years make was amazing to me. It got me thinking about school when my son gets that age. He is also living a digital childhood. ABC mouse, puzzle apps and painting. My son is part of a new generation he will never know what it’s like to not have so much knowledge at his fingertips. All great but what is going to happen to books?

    Technology based textbooks, I thought I was surprised by all the use of technology in the school but when the teacher told me they no longer had textbooks my mouth about hit the floor, he said students access the textbooks online and that they do not assign textbooks anymore. To read that in our book about technology based text books and then to actually see it coming to reality is unbelievable. The school does get a class set but they only get assigned if someone doesn't have access to the internet at home. In our textbook it mentioned about “low income youngsters are less likely to have access to the latest high-speed, highly interactive technologies” (Maloy, et al (2014, pp. 4-5) .Which causes a participation gap. I know in our course book it refers more to technology – based text books as not being a core textbook but the teacher can find material related to the subject for students to read or the teacher can even author their own material and post them to keep the students engaged in the material. I think that’s great especially in subjects like poetry or math, I think sometimes fresh ideas is a good way to get a student motivated.

            Technological Pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is three forms of knowledge brought together by teachers to give students a more engaging learning experience. This gives students the ability to use technology to understand the material. It also means teachers using different methods and ideas when teaching academic material. I think technology and education should really start going hand and hand together. I think that the generation has changed. We are now living in a digital age, I think to not let technology be a helper in the education process is not going to keep a student with a digital childhood engaged.

           I think all these concepts will be a factor on my teaching style. It will impact me as a teacher because I will have to keep up with the technology, if I don’t want to be left behind and if I don’t want to leave my students behind as well. I think homework programs and tutoring style technology is great. Students get automatic feedback and teachers can see how much time a student spends on a problem. I think that when it comes to TPACK and knowing my students are from a digital childhood, I think you can tailor your delivery of teaching differently. You can explore with the new technologies out there. I think actually being in a high school or a school and seeing the digital generation is really amazing. You can see where one might not be engaged if everything was straight out of a textbook. I can see the slow movement toward a more technological society. Below i put a hyperlink of the pro's and cons of digital textbooks and my video link is a great idea of how the classroom will look in the future.

http://tablets-textbooks.procon.org

Resources:

Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

"Technology in Education: A Future Classroom." YouTube. YouTube, 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2015.

"Tablets vs. Textbooks - ProCon.org." ProConorg Headlines. N.p., 2004. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.