Teach in a Media Driven Generation

I still remember, the first cellphone I had when I was a first year undergraduate student. It was a time that every dorm in the university had a land phone, and we would always run to the phone when it rang and guess who would that call be for. Our cellphone had very limited free text, talk and data then and we would be much more anxious the second half of a month than the first. However, by the time I graduated from university, smart phones were out and popular. With bigger screen, a variety of apps easily downloaded and installed, and an affordable price, they were far beyond a portable phone but a necessity not only for reaching people but more importantly accessing to information and resource. Data service from every phone company jumped from 2G to 4G before half of the world could even tell what ‘G’ stands for and what the differences between the two. Now we are living in a technology and media driven generation, and we are wondering how we can keep up.

The past decade also saw great changes happen in classroom. Blackboard is no longer literally black but sometime really white, smart, board. Textbook is no longer the only ‘truth’, because Quora can give you “the best answer to any question”. Students may not even have to get a tutor for help but instead, learn from the apps, like Coursera or Dualingual, on their individual learning paces and styles whenever there is wifi or internet connection. As a point made in a Documentary of Future Learning, it would take years to change the old knowledge to the newest discovery in the textbooks but a few click will do so in the internet.  As a teacher, facing with the social media  what do we teach and how do we teach? 

I don't think there will be simple and quick answers to the question asked above. But our educational goals. are more  The Future of Learning, Networked Society - Ericsson video pointed a good direction for us: we want to help our students to become life long learners. One of important element of being a life long learner is self-motived. This bring me back to the example about how kids are activity making multiple tries to find solutions and to try the mistakes when they play video games. I found this is so inspiring for a teacher because this may help us to think deeply about the question asked above if we reflect upon it.