Sam’s Online Journal

After reading this article, I discovered a lot of interesting facts and relevant ideas. Whilst there are far too many to share with you in this short paragraph I have included a few of my more personal favourites.

The internet allows for two way interaction with materials, whereas books and other standard learning materials only permit one. This encourages students to learn because they are actively engaged and are able to contribute to their own learning as well as to other students learning (discussion boards).

The internet, due to its diversity, is able to acknowledge multiple intelligences – abstract, textual, visual, social, musical and kinesthetic. This is very important for teachers and students today as it allows the learning material to cater for more students needs without consuming a lot of the teachers energy and time.

Children today take on a much more active approach to learning. Present teachers and even to some degree the student teachers used to learn new things by reading a manual, textbook or attending a course. Today however children and young adults prefer to tinker with the new object and learn through trial and error and by imitating other people. Teachers needs to cater for this active role in the classroom to engage their students.

Children need to be their “own librarian”. With so much information on the internet and coming from so many different sources, children need to be able to sift through it all to find the relevant information. This is a skill that teachers have to give students if they are going to be able to survive in todays society.

The information contained here originates from:
Seely Brown, J. (2000).Growing Up Digital. Change, March/April , 10-20. Last accessed on 28th July from: http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html