Lauren's Rough Draft of Paper 1
From Mizzou Wiki
Imagine that you woke up every morning at 8:30, 5 days a week, for 8 weeks to go sit in math class for college. What would you do during class? Would you write notes and listen intently to the teacher? Or would you browse around on the web checking your e-mails, and looking at your recently added friends page on your Facebook webpage for the majority of the class period? Michael Wesch from Kansas State University posted a video on YouTube that has roughly 2.5 million views so far. This is a very controversial video about the use of technology in today’s college classroom. Students in college today are so different than students were ten years ago. Technology has changed so much within the world today. The largest difference between the students in the past and the students today is the amount of technological advances students today have to work with. It is almost impossible to truly imagine a life today without technology. Technology has both good effects and bad effects on student life. The advancement of technology has changed how students are able to become culturally literate and culturally competent. The results of that change are bittersweet and the way students discipline themselves to use the technology they have is how they can become more culturally literate and more culturally competent.
Wesch’s video is about how students today are not giving their full attention to college and their studenthood. A list for the meanings of studenthood consisted of many things that Wesch did not mention in his video. The most common words that helped describe studenthood in today’s college life were books, debt, learning, studying, walking, parking, and dormlife. Wesch’s video focused primarily on the technology in the classroom today. Wesch never brought up the good side of using technology in the classroom. A good thing about how technology is used in student life today is that if class is being canceled for example, the teacher can e-mail all the students at once and address it quickly, easily and informatively. The problem that Wesch was trying to address in my opinion is how technology in the classroom is being used. It is not being used properly. If there are computers in a classroom, it is up to the student sitting in front of the screen how they are going to use it during class. With a computer, the student will use the computer to do whatever they feel they can handle while maintaining a good enough grade in the class. Students these days know how to multi-task and that is how students today are able to surf the web while listening to the teacher. The question there is that without that computer would the student be able to focus better on the teacher? Or would the student doodle with the pen and paper they have? It is student-nature today to multi-task. The ability to focus on the material being taught lies within the student. The computer could be used for additional web surfing to further the research to add more knowledge from a different source about what the student is learning in class that day. It is up to the student to discipline himself or herself.
There are elements of the video that I see in my classes. In Math 110, the girl sitting to the left of me every morning looks at her Facebook page for almost the whole class period. Facebook.com is an online social network developed for university students that has now branched off into a much larger worldwide communicating network. A reoccurring issue in Wesch’s video is that students bring their laptops to class and don’t work on class work. Instead, they browse around on the internet and multi-task. The student is partially listening to the professor and partially doing what they want to be doing. My generation and the generations below mine have grown up learning to multitask. Everything we do is multitasking. Our brains are capable and have been trained to take in so much information at one time. When I see the girl next to me in math class looking at her Facbook page, I get distracted. When I am writing notes and she is clicking away on her mouse it makes me look over by impulse. It draws my attention away from the teacher. Even just for that brief moment I could miss something that is vital to the lesson. Cell phones are also a hindrance in class. Text messages are a fairly new obsession with students today. Before cell phones, you had to wait to see someone or talk to someone on the phone before you could tell them anything. Now all you have to do is write a simple message on your cell phone and it should be received within minutes to the person it was sent to. “Facebooking” during class and/or texting during class are examples of technology that are not beneficial to the cultural literacy and the cultural competency of the student. They are distractions that can take away from the lesson being taught in class.
Videos, animation, network, and photos are all things you find on the internet. All of these are good things to help teach you somehow. The internet has created a whole new side to how people learn and the availability of information. As long as there is an active internet connection there is endless information at your fingertips. You just have to be literate in order to find information on the internet. If you’re sick, you can check your symptoms on WebMD with their handy symptom checker. If you are having trouble with math formulas, you can type the formula into google.com and you should get a link that will help you with your problem. Google is a great site for anything. The internet has created a whole new resource for students to use. There used to be just books and encyclopedias. Now we have Wikipedia! The internet has contributed a lot to the multitasking generation. You can have multiple tabs (multiple pages open at one time). On the computer you can have multiple programs open at one time. So there you have multiple programs like itunes, and solitare, and the internet. To add on to that, you have multiple pages open on your internet browser. That is a lot going on at once! But with today’s generations that is what we are growing up with. Students today understand that media. With the traditional learning style, like Wesch brings up in his video, “writing on the chalkboard (what’s missing: videos, photos, animation, network) forces the teacher to move” the student may feel bored or like they aren’t following what the teacher is saying because it is too slow paced. Students today are equipped to work through doing. In the video, Wesch brings up the very good point of “how can a student learn if they are just following along. Students have to learn by doing?” So, while people can argue that technology is hurting the student’s ability to focus in class, it should also be seen that technology in the classroom is a good thing. The difficulty is when students use the technology for things that won’t better their education and make them more culturally literate and culturally competent.
Technology has brought a whole new meaning to cultural literacy and cultural competency. To me those terms mean by example that you are able to go to California when you don’t reside there and you can hold a conversation with someone you don’t know. You can talk with them and they can respond. You can talk about things like the news or the weather or the internet. You could talk about things you know about in your culture because you both know about your culture. You are literate and you are competent in your culture. The internet has changed these terms. You can talk with someone not only about regular things but you can talk about the latest thing you read on the internet for example. The internet allows you to become more culturally literate and culturally competent. If the teacher in class was just writing up on the chalkboard and the student was just following along, information is limited. With technology and the availability of information it allows the student to have more information readily available to them. So the way you use the technology you have in class is the important piece. You can use it wisely to better your education or you can Facebook through class and ignore the teacher.
Summer enrollment is different than a full load of classes that start in the fall. Especially if they are your first college courses ever. My college experience has so far been for the most part, different than the college life I see in the video. A girl in the video holds up a sign that says her average class size is 115. I haven’t been exposed to a class size of over 25 yet. Other major differences are that the program I am enrolled in is an 8-week program. As opposed to a 16-week semester. The pace is much faster and I am required to stay on top of my class work and homework or I will get too far behind in just a matter of days. The video describes the typical student who has been enrolled in a full load of college courses and the student who sits in a regular lecture class. The biggest part of the video that does not relate to me is how the technology that I am allowed to use in class does not affect my ability to focus in class at all. I control and discipline myself to stay focused in class. In both of my courses this summer the classrooms are fully loaded with computers at each seat. This does not hurt me at all. I do not sit in class and look at a Facebook page all through class. If I needed or wanted to I would use the computer to search the internet for more knowledge about the material the teacher is teaching me. College is very important to me and I am not going to jeopardize that by looking at things on the internet that I can look at when I get out of class. I will use the technology in class to become more culturally literate and more culturally competent so I can become a better student.
