Now that the semester is coming to a close, I think back to the ICT timeline we completed at the beginning of this course. I am struck at the differences between the way that kids today interact with ICTs and the way that I did, having been born in 1974, and I ponder the question: Is this difference is mostly surface, or is it fundamental shift?
I think about how kids today don’t know what it was like to wait for a tape to rewind before you could listen to it. How exciting the new invention of “auto reverse” seemed. How it was necessary to get off the phone and wait when you or your parents were expecting another call. What it felt like to wait for a letter in the mail. Now, it seems that kids don’t have the need to wait – and I wonder if this is part of the reason that multitasking is the norm. Looking at facebook while texting, or tweeting while listening to music…it appears there is no need to separate tasks and concentrate on just one thing at a time.
I remember long car rides when looking out the window was the entertainment, now in-car DVD systems mean that even in the car kids can be affected by media. Today, youth can live practically 24/7 in touch with media. It appears this will be the case more and more in the future, as it is clear that youth dependence on media shows no sign of abating. I think, on reflection, the change is more fundamental that surface, as this sense of immediacy seems to permeate all that kids do today.
In recognizing that this change is fundamental, I think of the fact that while kids are interacting with media practically constantly outside of school, school itself has not experienced the same fundamental shift to remain more relevant to youth today and how they interact with the world. On the basis of technological changes experienced since my childhood, that I mentioned above, I should expect to say, “Kids today don’t know what it’s like to sit at a desk and watch a teacher write on the chalkboard”. But amazingly, this is still reality for kids today. Nowhere in their future work lives, will kids need to sit at desks without computers and look at chalk on a blackboard. (They don’t know the smell of purple ink on the old ditto school copies...but I digress.)
It is clear to me that kids deserve more interaction with media to reflect the reality of the world today, and the world they will inherit in the coming years. To deny them this is a disservice. One of the most important concepts I take from this course is the importance of meeting youth where they are in order to engage them and teach them. As librarians in schools and public libraries, we are fortunate to be in a position to include more media education in our planning and programming, to help make up for the system-wide lack of comprehensive change toward media inclusion across the curriculum.
Click on the above link to an article featuring a school that is getting it right, using laptops to collaborate with schools in Taiwan and Italy for curriculum enhancement, rather than using textbooks that are outdated the moment they are printed.
As librarians and educators, we need continue to advocate for widespread change as we implement the media programs we can, to reach the youth we can.
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