Research and Technology

The answer to the question, "How do you do research?" is a fairly simple one: I look it up online. If there is anything that I need to cite for a paper, I check all of the usual online resources before I do anything else. I type whatever it is I'm looking for into Yahoo! and click on the first link. That's where it starts. Of course, some courses require that I use actual real books or journal articles for papers, so I look them up on the library computer and go from there. Technology is really essential in how I do research for every topic.

I definitely see myself fitting into the statistics presented in the PowerPoint. For one, I certainly turn to the Internet before I turn to another person or to a book if I'm doing research (unless I am close friends with an expert or own a book on the topic already). I even use the Internet to find books on the topic I'm researching, so in a way I use the Internet to research the books I use to research. I, however, know how to research, so navigating the web is not as difficult for me as it may be for some students. For example, if I print something out, I read through it and find its main points before I decide if it's relevant to my topic and whether or not it's worth using. I have also never plagiarized from a web source.

I felt that the Electronic Constructivism article would have been more helpful for me if I wasn't a "digital native." I already know how to use technology in a classroom because I know how to use technology. I grew up with computers and cell phones and the like, and now technology is so ingrained in me that I wouldn't know how to approach teaching without some form of modern technology. I thought that the examples that the article gave were helpful but far too course specific. For example, my students will probably never write a paper on George Washington in my class, let alone one that compares him to George W. Bush (whose name, by the time I'm teaching, will be more likely to garner blank stares than knowing looks).

Students need to be taught researching skills. They need to be shown how to document information that they collect so they can go back and decide what is useful and what is not and will still know what source and which page it came from.

I participate in Web 2.0 to some extent. I have done podcasts for college classes and have blogged in the past (prior to this class), but I am most guilty of social networking, particularly on Facebook. Since most of the students in this class have to write a blog, I'd say that a lot of people nowadays, or at least a lot of "digital natives" participate in Web 2.0.

Digital Natives and Immigrants and Transparent Integration

Prensky's article, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants," discusses the differences between the ways that Digital Natives, students who grew up with some form of our current technology, differ from Digital Immigrants, people who did not grow up with modern technology. He asserts that Digital Natives cannot effectively teach Digital Immigrants without altering the "legacy" content which they are comfortable with teaching to include include some form of "future" content.

To answer the questions for the blog, I do believe that I have a responsibility to use computing technology. I belong to the "Digital Natives" era, albeit the very early stages of it, and I cannot imagine not using some form of recent technology, whether it be showing a YouTube video to aid a lesson or having my students contribute to a class blog or wiki. As the article pointed out, students today are bored with the traditional ways of teaching; the need new stimuli to keep them engaged. I've see this in my CT's classroom, which has nothing more high-tech than an overhead projector. The students are often distracted by things, which would most likely be less of an issue if they were more engaged in their education.

Obviously, this makes me unlike Jim. I am not hesitant or resistant to using technology or computers in my classroom, but I am also not so naive that I think that technology can teach students anything and everything. I suppose in that way that I am a little like Jim; I am skeptical that students could learn something as effectively from a web resource as they could from a live human being. I believe that computers need to be integrated into a classroom, but not that they need to take over.

For the most part, I agree with Prensky's argument, and I actually noticed something in it that proved it to an even further extent. Prensky mentioned that students today have been shaped by "the 'twitch speed' of video games and MTV." Prensky shows his "accent" in this statement because as a member of the "Digital Natives," I had very little contact with MTV, which was considered the most innovative thing to come out of the 80s. Admittedly, it is more relevant now with shows like "16 and Pregnant," but to be honest, even that is going out of style.