While watching the documentary “Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century” I had many conflicting feelings. Having gone through the traditional school process, observing a classroom in which they rely on technology makes me feel uncomfortable. I was expecting to see lots of white boards and teachers standing in front of the class teaching the students the materials, but when I saw the children using technology on their own while the teacher walked around for support it confused me. I have always thought that teachers were there to provide what was needed in the classroom, not children finding it on their own. So, this documentary really did take me by surprise. At first, I did not want to open my mind to the idea that there could be a school where the name of subjects are changed and teachers just observe and question when needed, but as time went on my curiosity began to get the best of me.
When the video began to question the children on their original experiences in traditional classrooms and the children answered by saying that they often got distracted and were not able to concentrate on their tasks, my mind immediately went to a special education classroom. I have been working in special education classrooms for while now, and one thing that the teacher and I struggle with a lot is keeping the student’s attention. Though, this problem seems to disappear when we put on a video or make an interactive game. Taking those things into consideration, I used all of this to imagine what my future classroom would be like.
Whenever you ask a teacher to describe their ideal classroom, it always starts off with something like, “having engaged students and making sure that I reach all of them”. We all know that there are some things that you cannot control, like reaching every student, but there are things you can do to aide the situation. So my plan in to integrate a lot of interactive activities to keep the children engaged. If the children are being constantly challenged with a hands-on activity, you can ensure a better comprehension of the material because they will be fully immersed in the content as opposed to just staring at it. Hopefully doing this will have the impact as it did to the children in this documentary.
A link to the documentary mentioned above can be found here: http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/88156606-82dc-4c6e-bdc0-65cf0dc37692/digital-media-new-learners-of-the-21st-century/ (Links to an external site.)
Alicia Olik-Egner 