POST #3 : "Big Thinkers: Henry Jenkins on New Media and Implications for Learning and Teaching"

Today, we watched a video about the digital age and how technology can be useful in schools when it is not limited. Jenkins tells us about how having a controlled access to internet (parental control to go on safe websites) can stop students in their researches. He gave us the example of doing a research on Moby Dick. Kids can hardly find information about that subject simply because there is the word “dick” in the expression and that it is on the school’s black list. Jenkins also says that kids value learning in games and a lot of educational games can be made with technology. He also says that some kids, who are poorer, are limited to schools and libraries to have access to technologies like cameras, audio recording or computers. Teachers do not use as much electronic tools as they should to give more opportunity to students to explore them. Henry Jenkins also mentions that teachers are scared of losing control of their classes while using technology, but they should use it to bring students to become autonomous learners. Furthermore, teachers can build an online community to help each other to deal with that.

Like Jenkins says, I do believe that the web security settings that schools impose put limits to students’ researches. I perfectly understand that those settings are there to protect children from going on some nasty websites or playing games while a class goes on, but I think that we should give more freedom to our classes and trust them. If a teacher notices something strange going on, students should receive a consequence. I know that there are still some families who cannot afford to buy a computer so, I also believe that teachers should try to incorporate as much ICTs as they can in their class, but only if they are relevant for a task. It will give more opportunities to poorer students to have access to technology. To create shared learning opportunities across generations, teachers should base their projects about passions or subjects that everyone can have a stand on. The level of implication of students will be higher and it gives them the opportunity to share and discuss.  Finally, copyrights and authorship seems to be subjects that a lot of people care about. To be able to fix that problem with your students while using ICTs, some online activities can be done to make them explore all the issues about those subjects. Those activities can be done as games.

Here is the link to the video we watched in class:http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-henry-jenkins-media-video