In both reading about and directly experiencing American K-12 education, I am struck by the incredible disconnect between what happens in school and what happens when kids step outside the classroom into a culture dominated by digital media. Lap tops, I-pods, cell phones, digital cameras, you-tube, web-cams, my space, face book- these are among the exploding array of new media tools that youth culture is using to invent new means of socializing, creating, sharing and assessing multiple streams of entertainment and information. Standing in stark contrast to this landscape of digital media are the hours spent by students sitting inside classrooms designed around an archaic, 20th century model of education that is far too often out of synch with the realities of work and life in the 21st century.
A lot of adults might watch kids interact with digital media and wonder if the they are just killing time by socializing or seeking entertainment instead of learning. The issue of learning and digital media was the focus of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Youth Project. Over three years, University of California, Irvine researcher Mizuko Ito and her team interviewed over 800 youth and young adults and conducted over 5000 hours of online observations as part of the most extensive U.S. study of youth media use. Read this study and I think your ideas about students and media may be altered. The study suggest a lot of learning is occurring as students participate in the digital society. As educators I think we need to pay close attention to how new media reshapes where and how school is conducted.
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