Technology Through My Students’ Eyes

INTERVIEW SUMMARY

Most of my students consider technology their world – cell phones, myspace, music -- and wouldn’t know what to do without it.

“I think I couldn’t do without a cell phone and if it wasn’t invented I would die.”

Most of them have cell phones, tv’s with dvd players, computers with internet connection, and digital cameras (important for taking photos to download to myspace).

At home they spend a lot of time talking on the phone and online (on myspace).

Their parents use technology in similar ways such as talking on the phone and sending email, but some mentioned seeing their parents use the computer for work but they weren’t very sure exactly what they were doing.

In school, the students mostly use laptops to look up things and to create powerpoint presentations.

Most of them had the same answer for using technology at home and one mentioned typing up her work.

For entertainment, all of the students mentioned myspace and playing games. One used her cellphone for playing games because she didn’t have a computer, another mentioned having a playstation, but most use the computer for playing games.

There were mixed results for how the students learned to use technology. Some mentioned specific classes at school and others viewed it more as an evolutionary process in their lives.

Wish list at home? Most said they had everything they needed, although one student wanted her own computer.

Wish list at school? One student wished we had a Playstation at school so he could play games in his spare time. The others thought what we had (laptops) was adequate.

Teaching teachers-4 out of 5 said they would teach the teachers how to have fun with the computer and to use “myspace”. “how myspace is important” “how myspace is okay”.

4 out of 5 said that “myspace” was their favorite thing to do online.

As for learning more about technology: “I know all I want to know about it.”, “Nothing.”, “Everything I can.”, “Anything and everything.”, “How to more effectively research a topic.”.

REFLECTIONS

Myspace is the overwhelming factor in these kids’ lives. I guess what bothers me most is that I see kids spending all this time cultivating relationships via technology (computer and cellphone) and I’m wondering how this impacts their ability to have human face-to-face relationships? As for myself, it’s much easier for me to communicate via the computer than face to face. I can be bolder and chose my words more carefully. I wonder if there have been studies done on this yet?

The other aspect of the interviews that I found disturbing is that most of the students thought that school should be about having fun (not necessarily having fun while you learn) and that teachers should be incorporating myspace into the learning. I would like to explore this possibility further but I’m not sure it’s appropriate as I’ve heard about teachers using myspace and getting in trouble.

One caveat about these students (and most at my school) is that they don’t have any hobbies or extracurricular activities, nor do they spend much time doing homework. Thus they have about 7 hours outside of school each day where they fill their boredom with myspace and the cell phone. As you can imagine their general knowledge is extremely poor.

Another comment is that every one of these students is from a lower middle class family(downright poor in one or two cases) and yet they all had access to plenty of technology.

Thanks for reading this and I would love to have your comments, questions, and feedback. susan