This week’s readings intrigued me for a number of reasons. The first connection for me was how ordinary my family is when using mobile devices. As I read the Income, Race and Class article by Yardi and Bruckman (2012), I couldn’t help but think to myself “hey, that’s me and our family”. Our family is classified as the average white, middle class family. We are the family that purchased the cell phone for our son when he transitioned to the middle school as a form of open communication (p. 3046). We are the family that has individual mobile devices (p. 3046) and we are the family that threatens to take away our son’s phone from him as a form of punishment if academic grades begin to slip (p. 3047). We are the typical high SES family; a statistic in society. It amazes me just how typical we are in this 21st century world and that we’re not alone.
I also saw connections to my classroom and the reading, Wired Whizzes or Techno-Slaves by McKay and Toomey Zimmerman. There is definitely a digital divide as well as media rich and poor in my classroom. I see the white “haves” and the black and Hispanic “have nots”. As stated on page 194 (McKay, S & Toomey Zimmerman, H., 2005), mobile devices “provide easy access at home or school, together with confidentiality and individualized advice, makes the internet a very suitable resource for young people seeking information.” That is, if it’s available to the teen. Using mobile computer devices provides a form of learning that extends teaching from the classroom into everyday lives. I think it is a fantastic learning tool but it is only beneficial to those that possess it.
Another topic of interest to me was the gaming factor and how it relates to learning experiences as mentioned in the Wired Whizzes or Techno-Slaves reading. On page 193, Gee (2003) stated that “gaming not only provides a sense of identity” for the user but it also builds connections which in turn creates “meaning from the gaming experiences”. To have this kind of engagement in learning is something that fascinates me as an educator. Gaps in socioeconomic areas will exist but hopefully policy makers will make wise choices to expand areas the gap begins to close and all students have a successful future. The Digital Youth Project, mentioned in the New Technology and Digital Worlds (Warschauer & Matachniak, 2010) was an excellent example of transitioning from a “messing around” type of experimenting to a more sophisticated form of “geeking out” learning . There is so much to learn in this facet of education that I feel is necessary to explore the options of gaming and make the time to create changes in our classrooms.
Sources:
- Mckay, S., Thurlow, C., & Zimmerman, H. T. (2005). Wired whizzes or techno-slaves?: Young people and their emergent communication technologies. In A. Williams & C. Thurlow (Eds.), Talking adolescence:Perspectives on communication in the teenage years (pp. 185-203). New York: Peter Lang.
- Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179-225.
- Yardi, S., & Bruckman, A. (2012). Income, race, and class: exploring socioeconomic differences in family technology use. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3041-3050). ACM
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