Cathy’s World

The author pointed out that the new generation spend over 10,000 hours playing games and consider the brain structure of the new generation to be different as the way they have grown up differently.

“Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures, “ is said by Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine. Today’s world is totally far different from what we have 20 years ago. I don’t agree what he said but I do agree the world is changing so the way of how children behave and think can be far different.

So, as educators, we need to think how we should adjust our methology to teach students and help them to achieve better learning outcome.

The author suggests that today’s economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what we might called “21st century skills”.

The author suggested that our kids are global citizen and even in small towns of American, kids must learn to act that way as just the way of trend all around the world.

Interestingly, Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, suggests that most companies need workers who are “global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages”–not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

I do agree with Mike’s point, in order to be competitive in this world, we need to teach our kids to be global citizen, which means they can master not only one language and to be multilingual. In many European countries, people speak more than two lanaguages wherease in Australia, most of students only can master one lanugage, which is their first lanaguage, English.

Although the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudds did promise and aim to make Australians Asain-literate, in my point of view, this is long way to go. As most my Year 7 students found learning Chinese difficult and were willing to drop out in Year 8, remarkably, this is too later for students to acquire a second langague.

Even in Taiwan, learning a second language, English is mandatory in primary school. Starting to learn a second language in primary school is much better and easier for students to learn rather than in Year 7. In order to make Australian to be global citizen, DET should change the policy and require students to choose a second lanuage as compulosy subject in primary school.

This is an interesting article. Although the author did raise some good points and suggestions but in reality it is quite hard to be taken place.

For example, the author states that major equipment manufacturers invest lots of money to create lower-cost, portable, hand-held computer devices so each of student can afford to have low-cost learning appliances that aslo be able to moved from class to class.

However, in reality, it is quite hard to take action with limit fundings in public school. Not all students can afford to buy a  “low-cost” learning appliance. 

In public school where I have my practicum, there is an interactive whiteboard in each classroom wherease in my friend’s priavte school, every student  has small whiteboard on their desk so they can follow teacher’s instruction and practice at the same time rather than waiting their turn to do the task on whitebord.

The author aslo comments that  “schools incorporate technonly can offer the best combination of traditional face-to-face instruction such as role modelling and moral building.” I can not agree what the author addresses here because I believe moral building should start from how parents and teachers set up good role models rather than anything to do with technonloy.

 

After reading Rosa’s writing, I have aslo found myself often spending a huge amount of time on internet instead of going out that much.  Yeah, it is quite frunstrating and depressing when we are so addicted into technology and media. In Taiwan, everyone is so busy and the weather is quite hot in summer acutally in most seasons except winter. People tend to spend a huge amount of time on internet instead of going out to social with the others. It has turn into a trend that people tend to chat online with the others instead of truly developing a meaningful relationship or friendship with the others.

In term of healthy well-being, this is not a right way to do it. For children, it is not healthy, either. I do agree with Rosa’s point that parents should limit the time of children using internet. Children should spend more time with their family rather than online chatting with some friends or strangers. The parents should also teach children what they should be aware,especially chatting with strangers.

In this article, Prensky defines today’s kids as the Digital Natives, native speakers of the digital language, as opposed to the former generation which he classifieds as the generation of the Digital Immigrants consisting of all the people who were not born in the digital world.

I agree with Maun’s point, students are uing technology all the time these days and technonly is essential tool for them to communicate with each other.I agree with her point that we should all try to use technonlogy to implement into our KLA curriculum in order to cater our students’ needs.

I agree with her that we should not only pay attention to the content of teaching material but also how we introuduce to our students and truly value what they need in order to achieve good learning outcome.

After reading Yuri’s post, I do agree with her that it is important to consider the context to use games in class. I also agree with her that meaningful and effective game-based learning occurs when teachers introduce relevant games in an appropriate context.
Overall, the game based learning should be supervised and should be conducted in relevant context. Otherwise, it would lose the meaning of learning and students would only enjoy playing games.

After reading Ms. Chen’s post, I do agree with her and the author’s statement. We are entering into a digital learning century. Most children have access to the internet, listen to iPod, play Wii and online games. Being a teacher, we need to be aware how to implement technology into learning and motivate our students. The author did raise some interesting points.

This article proposed the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that
offers a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9–12, in educational
tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons
from educational research on learning and motivation. It provides users at participating elementary schools and after-school centers to travel through virtual spaces to perform educational activities

For digital generation, young students play computer game and Wii most of their spare time. In order to make learning fun, we need to make our learning setting suitable our students’ needs.
The evolving mission of QA is to support children in building their own sense of purpose
as individuals, as members of their communities, and as knowledgeable citizens of the
world. Toward realizing this mission, the program came to embrace seven social commitments
and respective, abbreviated slogans that underlie our design decisions:
1. Creative Expression— I Express Myself.
2. Diversity Affirmation— Everyone Matters.
3. Personal Agency— I Have Voice.
4. Social Responsibility— We Can Make a Difference.
5. Environmental Awareness— Think Globally,
Act Locally.
6. Healthy Communities— Live, Love, Grow.
7. Compassionate Wisdom— Be Kind.
In term of making learning fun and engaging, I do agree with the author’s idea. But, on the other hand, the learning will turn into solely playing games and I do believe appropriate learning can be taken place when the teacher is working with students and should not just solely rely on technology and online games.

This is an interesting article, which is written by the primary school teacher and the researcher in Singapore. The authors suggest that underachiever students often have difficulties in focusing attention on learning and easily lose their interest. In term of this statement, I truly agree what authors stated. During my practicum, I personally found it was extremely hard to motivate the students with low achieving abilities. There were a couple of students who found learning Chinese very difficult and it was very hard to make them engage the class. Learning Chinese is not an easy task especially for non-background learners, Chinese has complex characters with four tones phonics system.

The main purpose of learning is to make students enjoy learning and motivate them willing to actively involve class activities. However, I found it was very difficult to engage these certain students until using interactive white board.

The author was using the three-dimensional (3D) Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Active Worlds, could engage underachiever students in learning the scientific concept of the Solar System.Results showed that the students were engaged in the learning task and expected more topics. As applying the strategy, using interactive white board in my class, it also produced similar outcome, these low achieving students surprisingly engage on the task and learn while they play the software lesson.

However, it was hard to keep everyone’s attention when there was only one big interactive white board on the screen. The only work I can do it pair work, the rest of students were awaiting their turn to take practice. So, the other students got bored and became noisy again.
The practicum I was doing is public school, unlike the other private schools, every kids has their own small interactive white board. So, while the teacher was giving instruction on the interactive white board, the students also can do something on their own as well.

After reading this article, I feel like this article was actually describing me. The author actually points out many perspectives of young generation do these days.

I am part of the multitasking generation, I do my assignments and listen to music at the same time as well as chatting with my best friend in USA on msn. Also, I check up my facebook and chat with friends on facebook as well.

I can completely understand why the youge generation are so much influenced by the media and our lives can not be separable from all these media and music.

Being a teacher, we should be aware of this issue. We should foucs on their needs and cater differnet kind of class activites to motivate them to learn and engage in lessons.

Creating interesting online activites can be a great way to engage our students and I found students can be so engaged when I was using interacitve whiteboard and they are so much caught by colorful and amazing setting of lesson what interactive whiteboard has offered.