As the embedded video tells us, the technology use can look very different depending on how we decide to use it. The video gives us an example of two kids with totally different attitudes towards technology tools (Halverson, 2013). One of the kids comes home from school with her homework and turns on her technical devices that will help her. She uses for example Wikipedia to search for information, and she uses Facebook to communicate with her friends about the homework. With other words, she´s using digital media to create a learning environment for herself.
The other kid is using the same technology but for different reasons. He listens to music and play games and has not really a model for how to use the technology. All of the people that surround him use the technology for entertainment. He doesn´t know how to use the technology to amplify his learning experiences. As new tools and technologies are arising, it supports something that can be called globalization (Black 2009: p. 688). It´s now possible for us to communicate with people all over the world, but where we in this example can see that it depends on how conscious we are about the technology´s benefits.
The example above shows different kinds of technology usage which reminds me of how it has looked like in a school back home in Sweden. I used to work as a substitute where all of the kids were using smartphones even during class. They were using it for things outside learning and the teachers decided after a while to prohibit mobile phone use during school. I think the problem here is that the students haven’t learned how to use the technology for learning which I think is something we must improve. When a person pursues his or her interests with the support of friends, and is able to link this learning to academic achievement, it is working with something called connected learning (Ito, M. et al. 2013: p. 6). Digital media expands the accessibility and reach of connected learning, but my example shows that the use of technology also can be negative if we don´t know the best ways of using our technical devices.
Before this unit I was pretty against the use of technology because of my own negative experiences. After this unit I feel that my opinion has changed and I have a better understanding of how positive the technology use can be if we just know how to use our devices. My own experience of how the technology can promote learning comes from this unit as email and the elearning system has been used to help the teacher and the students to communicate with each other. This has helped me a lot with getting the latest information which would be impossible without the technology. We have also read lots of digital articles during the unit which I found very positive and convenient as you could read them whenever you wanted without the need of hard copies.
References
Black, R. W. (2009). English language learners, fan communities, and 21st-centuries skills. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(8), 688–697. Retrieved from http://opac.library.usyd.edu.au/search~S4?/redgu1002/redgu1002/1,1,1,B/frameset~4977953&FF=redgu1002&1,1, (2015-10-12)
Ito, M., et al. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
(2013). 6 2 Technology Inside versus Outside of Classrooms Rich Halverson. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2LnT6v0lrQ (2015-10-12)
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