Do No Harm...

As said by Mr. Henry Jenkins, the usage of technology is a must in the present days.  Expressions used by Mr. Jenkins really reflect the difference between students and teachers.  Those expressions are Digital Native and Digital Immigrant.  I really like those terms because they do apply in a perfect way at what the teachers and students are facing.  We must all agree that technologies are part of our everyday world and that with limiting the access to it.  By doing so, don’t we limit the access to knowledge too? 

The schools are limiting the kid’s access to digital tools by blocking some websites and by making sure the browser doesn’t recognize some words that are not proper to the learning situation.  For sure it can be seen as a good way to limit the students, but in another way, is YouTube so bad?  Don’t we find a lot of knowledge, experience and information that are relevant on this particular websites?  Yes, I think that we do have to limit access but to a certain point.  Let’s have faith and confidence in our students and let them explore the World Wide Web.  We, as teachers, will have to make the limit.

For the gap participation, we have to say that depending on the social deviation of the school, it will be forming a gap.  But these days with the technology being available for everyone, the gaps are almost not there anymore.   Even students who have had access to technology have had different experiences with it and have thus gained different skills, predilections, and comfort levels with different technologies.

I think a good way to share learning across generation is to have the older generations have some courses given by students that are at ease with the technology.  We could make this course a kind of reward for the students and an incentive too.  It would be rewarding for the kids for sure.

For sure schools are not ready to give up control to kids because schools like to have the controlled and to be structured.  It is normal because there is too much on the line.  At the same time, it is hard to control the work the students will do on the computers.  Being in a digital age, it is easy to plagiarise and we have to make sure the students are aware of the problem.