Digital Students: Teaching in Context of Culture

No one would think it makes any sense to head out into the tribes of Papua New Guinea armed with lesson plans full of laptops, video cameras, wikis, blogs or digital storytelling tools--I suppose it makes no more sense to head into a 21st century American classroom without them. I am still not sold on the idea of replacing the traditional classroom with technology, but it does make sense to integrate. I really honestly just think it is good pedagogy to be mixing things up and offering variety, and opportunities to create and explore new information. It just so happens that if technology is involved, it generally means that these things are happening. Great, interactive lessons can happen without technology, too, and they should. People shouldn't be dependent on technology, but they should have opportunities to use it to better themselves and their educations.

I found both of these videos to be interesting. The video about the college students was very poignant and exposed a lot of truths about college education. It is not only true that many college professors do not utilize technology, but that they do not even utilize good pedagogy. This combination, in this place and time, can really be devastating for students. Especially since we are paying for this education.

The video about the k-12 students reminded me of Lisa Delpit's book Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, if only because of the moment when the children ask what would you want "if I were your son? your daughter?" It reminded of an important conflict. We as educators have to remember to value our students' education as highly as we would value that of our own children's, but that we also have to remember that not every parent wants the same for their children as we do for our own. For example, if we do paper and pencil all the time, the education will not be engaging or effective, and many parents will be angry with this. If we do "fun" interactive technology lessons all the time, without maintaining a visible level of rigor, relevance and applicability to a curriculum, we'll have yet more people to answer to. We have to find a balance between our own values, the values of our students, and the values of our students' parents.