Chris Betcher’s blog posting, The Truth is Out There has really shed some light on the article that was published in the Sydney Morning Herald about PLC’s experiment into allowing students to use whatever resources they can to help them in their exams. The article merely introduces the idea to the public but Chris, being a teacher at the school and having discussed the idea with its creator, Deirdre Coleman, explains the ideas behind its invention and why it has come about. During practicum I realised the impact that technology is having on students, particularly in the realm of assessments. With an endless amount of resources to consult, cases of plagiarism are becoming much more prevalent and a lot harder to detect. This is a factor that cannot be avoided and with technological advancements will become even more commonplace. Accepting this and thinking about ways to make this a positive is essential and I think PLC are on the right track and everybody will eventually have to follow suit. Chris makes a really valid point about the futility of learning chunks of information just to pass an exam and then never using it again when what is really important is critical thinking . With the vast amounts of information available and the fact that anybody can publish this information on the internet the danger now is that much of it is not authentic. What is important is for students to be critically evaluating this information and not just accepting things at face value. Due to the Net Gen’s need for speed they can often be found to take the easy road, this is where they need a motivator and a guide, these are some of the new role of the teacher.
I found some very interesting points in Will Richardson’s blog posting, Reading Online is Not Reading on Paper. It is essential that teachers, old and new be aware of the pitfalls for including ICT in the classroom. While this kind of technology in the classroom is new the technology is not new to those people in the classroom. The digital natives have been exposed to this technology since the day they were born and use it on a daily basis to access all types of information and for many different reasons. Although the students may be more comfortable with this kind of technology, one thing they don’t have is a teaching degree. It is the teacher’s job to ensure that the technology is being integrated in an authentic and meaningful way. The American government is complaining that introducing ICT into the classroom has not improved students’ skills and knowledge but it is more complicated than simply making the technology available. Teachers must be trained in how to incorporate it into their pedagogy not the other way around. Richardson refers to Bauerline’s article, Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind in which another major problem facing the Net Gen is revealed, the deterioration of their reading skills now that the majority of their reading takes place on the computer. Jacob Neilson’s study showed that the majority of subjects, rather than “reading linearly, sentence by sentence tended to jump around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and colour and typeface variations.” Also he found that the attention span for reading has greatly diminished, this is a scary thought for literature and language in general. While learning different ways of reading different media is important a balance should always be maintained. A major focus in education at the moment is literacy, perhaps Nielson has discovered a contributing factor to the poor levels of literacy found in the Net Gen. Students need to be encouraged to engage in litterature in all forms but especially novels and material that will challenge them and enhance their literary skills.
