This is a facinating article. This paper would work great for a professional learning community group to read and discuss over several months. There is so much to talk about in just the first 36 pages. Overall, I agree with the reports central goal that we have to move from thinking of technolgocal access as the main discussion and move to opportunities to participate in all forms of media technology and the cultural competencies and social skills needed to fully participate in the 21st century. The report makes me realize how the gap continues to grow between affluent families and higher poverty families in the areas of access, but also the complexity of technological skills that students will be expected to have. I know many of our ELL families do not have computers at home, so the only opportunities for these children may be at school or at a friend's house. Usually these two types of experiences do not allow for playing with technology and exploring in a leasurely fashion. I think powerful learning can take place when children have a chance to just explore and enjoy teaching themselves through discovery.
For all students a major goal of media education will have to be to teach children to make ethical choices as they create media, communicate with others and explore commericial sites.
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It does seem that technology develops faster than we can respond to it. It would be good to have time to discuss all the ideas presented in this article and make wise decisions about how we use technology with children, but the technology just keeps evolving and is in use before its ramifications are known.
Since I’m not sure we have the technological understanding required to project what will happen (being digital immigrants and all), I think we have a responsibility to see that those making the decisions about using technology in our schools are ethical, tech-savvy, educational-minded people who keep in mind development of the whole child.
One realization that I've come to during the course of this class is just how difficult it is to employ some of these new technologies within the confines of our schools. Part of this is protective - allowing our students to interact with each other also lets in some pretty unsavory elements. So how do we provide safe spaces for them to explore and discover. I think it's inherent for our school districts to begin loading some of these networked technologies onto their servers so that teachers and students can engage more in this participatory culture, but in a safer space.
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