Disappointed Students.

28Jan09

Since I was not able to take part in the fieldtrip to Steinmühle, my task was/is to interview a student (grade 5-13) and get some information about his or her experiences with and thought about the use of new media at school.

The interview was very interesting and contained many different thoughts, which I will present in the following.

Student information:

female, 18, grade 12, advanced courses Biology and Art, basic course English

Current situation

Used Media: blackboard, OHP; rarley: Projector (Physics), TV (Biology), audio, Internet (Biology and Maths)

Used Media in the English Classroom: blackboard and OHP; rarely: audio (more frequent use in grades five-eight)

Teaching media competence: All students have to participate in a Computer Science class in grade 7, where they learn the basic concepts of Word and Excel. About one third of all students choses ecology as a subject in grade 9 (WPU). These are the only students, who learn how to use PowerPoint.

Internet Research: Although noone seems to have great difficulties to find information via the internet, students are not aware of problems or complications with unreliable sources etc., wikipedia is accepted as reliable source of information by all teachers (who often use wikipedia themselves), students are not taught how to work with search engines etc.

Presentations: Students usually get to chose the media they want to present with. Many students use PowerPoint, although teachers do not mark the design/use/arrangement of slides. Even though many students found their way around PowerPoint themselves, some do not know how to work with it.

Email: Some teachers use emailing in order to inform their students about tasks or further reading and students can ask questions via email. Although some teachers tend to overuse this device, whoich can be annoying sometimes, it is a very good and handy way to stay informed and get help with homework or studying.

Teacher knowledge: Most teachers do not seem very interested in the use of new media. Of course, there is a huge difference between older and younger teachers. “Elder” or more old fashioned teachers hardly ever use other media devices besides the blakboard and OHP. Younger ones at least try to include a media method change here and there but often fail due to missing knowledge about how to get things started (even when trying to switch on a TV and/or DVD player).

Requests for the future

Used Media: more frequent use of PCs/Internet and the TV, especially because the school is fully equipped (several computer labs, internet access, flatscreen TVs in many science classrooms). Basically, new media would be welcome in terms of method variability, preparation for the future and global learning.

Used Media in the English classroom: The projects and methods we already discussed in class, such as Email-”Pen” Pals, Blogs, Chats, Video Conferences etc., seemed very useful and motivating in her opinion.

Teaching media competence: She wished for a (more intense) teaching of Internet and PC competence e.g. working with different programmes (besides Word), such as PowerPoint. Although many students taught themselves how to work with such programmes, a teacher guided class would reach every student and give a better overview. Since she was not aware of certain problems that come with Internet researches, I would suggest teaching students how to do a proper internet search and what to careful about.

Email: Although some teacher already use email very efficient, she wished for a broader use, such as providing an Email-address-list for every course to make things easier.

Teacher knowledge: In order to educate students properly, teachers need to know their way around media devices. She clearly criticized the missing knowledge about PCs, projectors etc.

Overall

I was able to get quite a good insight into the media use at this girls current grammar school. To be honest, I was very disappointed about what I heard. New media is rarely used and students – although they would like to do it – do not learn anything about proper Internet and PowerPoint use. These two competences are the most important (in my opinion) for students to learn, since they will definitely need them in their future lives.

But I guess these circumstances are due to the fast growing field of New Media. Most teachers were probably never taught 1. how important this type of education is and 2. how to use and teach it. As the student said, it is mostly the young and/or science teachers, who use media devices such as PowerPoint, Internet, Computers etc. Without “talking prejudices” these are the teachers, who partly grew up with computers and learned how to use them in uni and/or are interested in the field of science and technology.

This might just be a gathering of thoughts and theses, but however, as soon as we get to teach at schools, something has to change – because we are aware of these problems and know how to solve them (or at least google for answers).

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Tags: generation conflict, Internet, school, skills, students, tasks, teachers