Blog #2

                                            

My relationship to technology is very close and I would identify myself as more as a digital native then as a digital immigrant (Prensky 2001). I use technology in my everyday life and without it I would be lost. When it comes to using technology in the classroom I have found that it has been used more in my college experience then when I was in high school, middle, and elementary. I’m not sure if that is because as I was growing up, technology was beginning to grow as well. However, I strongly feel that the older the teacher, the more apt they are to use their familiar way of teaching instead of adapting to the newest technology.

After watching the video made by Wesch (2007), it reminded me that everything done on the internet is done by an actual person. Technology did not come from the sky magically, it was created by people and on the internet everyone and anyone can contribute to it. Through the use of the internet we can now obtain information instantly then what we could in the past and I feel that mot digital natives will never understand how lucky they are to have this information at the click of a button since they’ve never experienced a world without technology.

In my experience as a youth worker this summer at a middle school summer camp one of the classes taught was Minecraft.  This class had the students excited to go to class because they would be allowed to play an actual video game in class. The teacher was able to use this particular video game because he put an educational spin on the game. Through this method the student were able to play a video game that they liked as well as gain an education. The teacher did have to do a lot of prep work in order to have this be a success. According to Prensky (2001) he identified this as: “The first involves a major translation and change of methodology; the second involves all that PLUS new content and thinking” (4). This teacher did take the initiative to learn about this new sensation that his students were addicted to. He then took the new sensation, Minecraft, and found how he could connect the video game to an educational lesson, that being government. Many other teachers have used this game for educational purposes as well; this link shares a couple of examples of what you can do with Minecraft in an educational setting http://learningstarts.org/crafty-ways-to-use-minecraft-at-school.