I do believe that I am a part of the digital generation, or as someone that I know says the "head down" generation. Mainly because most people my age are constantly on their phones, ipad, tablets, computers, ect. I feel that, even though I am proud to say that I have been making an effort to not be a part of that generalization anymore. Even though I am still trying to bring my mother into the 21st century and into a smart phone (yes she still has an EnV3), I feel like I am a part of a generation that is going to raise a generation that will be completely dependent on technology.
While I was being home schooled - My mother used a really awesome CD learning tool, that I cannot remember the name of right now, and I can even remember some of the lesson (I can even sing the songs still). She incorporated them for grades 1-5 and at the time people thought she was being a bad teacher by letting us learn from a CD! Now when I substitute I see iPads in the younger classrooms with educational apps, all the way up to the high school being used to many things. This is where I believe that I am not following the popular opinion of supporting this technology in the classrooms. The type of lessons that my CDs gave, in my opinion, are completely different than the kind that iPads can give. A CD must follow a specific pattern, games, lessons, ect and it cannot be deviated from that. The schools, however, are dependent on "blocks" and passwords to keep the student body from going off task and doing thinks that they should not be doing. However, many people that I know, that are younger than me, can break those blocks and passwords with little to no effort. Unfortunately, it does upset me to see this kind of technology in the schools now.
As my mom mentioned in her blog, my sophomore year of high school I was required to do a project for our summer reading in my AP English class. I got the idea to make Myspace (yes, this was back in the days of myspace) pages for each of the main characters in the 2 required books and have them interact with each other. However, I ran into a huge roadblock when I went to present it to the class only to find out that I couldn't get to them because Myspace was blocked from the schools internet. I ended up going to the principal to explain my project, give him the website addresses, and having to get permission to have them unblocked. While at the time I felt like I was jumping through a million hoops just to present my project, I feel like if I was to give the presentation now I wouldn't be meeting quite as many blocks. The schools have become more relaxed with their technology rules, and I feel that my project would be met with a softer eye now that technology has forced it's way into the classroom.
I believe that the online classroom will become more popular and the students like me who are all online, will be the ones giving others the strange looks when they say their classes meet in a lecture hall. Technology in the classroom has come so far in my lifetime, and I can only anticipate that it will go further.
